Gyanvapi: Petitioner moves Varanasi court for ASI survey on cellars
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Varanasi: A new petition has been moved at the Varanasi district court demanding the Archeological Survey of India's (ASI) survey of all closed cellars in the Gyanvapi mosque complex, except the one where pujas are performed now.
The court has listed the plea for Tuesday.
It had been only days before the court, in an order, allowed a priest to perform prayers in a cellar in the mosque, PTI reported.
The petitioner, Rakhi Singh, is a founding member of the Vishwa Vedic Sanatan Sangh and is one of the parties in the Maa Shringar Gauri case, which led to the survey of the complex by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). In the petition, she asked for all closed cellars in the Gyanvapi mosque complex, adjacent to the Kashi Vishwanath temple, to be surveyed by the ASI, her advocate Anupam Dwivedi said.
He said a map of the closed basements has also been included in the petition.
The petition said there are "secret cellars" inside the basements, and it is necessary to survey them also so that the "entire truth" of the Gyanvapi mosque is revealed.
Following an earlier petition by five women devotees, the court had ordered the ASI to conduct a survey of the Gyanvapi mosque complex, barring the "wazukhana" used for ritual ablutions before namaz.
The southern cellar of the Gyanvapi mosque was opened last week, and a priest performed prayers.
The court had allowed regular prayers in the cellar on the petition by Shailendra Kumar Pathak, who claimed that his maternal grandfather, priest Somnath Vyas, used to perform prayers there till December 1993.
According to Pathak's counsel, the priest's access to the cellar was closed during Mulayam Singh Yadav's term as Uttar Pradesh chief minister.
The prayers at the cellar are being performed by a priest nominated by the Kashi Vishwanath temple trust. Devotees to the temple have also begun going past the opening in the barricade, created after the court order, to have a glimpse of the cellar.
According to Hindu parties in the case, the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb destroyed the temple that existed there and built the Gyanvapi masjid, and the recent ASI survey also claimed the same.