Pooja in southern cellar of Gyanvapi mosque to continue as HC adjourns matter for next week

The Allahabad High Court adjourns hearing on the plea challenging the permission for Hindu prayers in Varanasi mosque.

The pooja in the southern cellar inside the Gyanvapi mosque in Varanasi will continue as of now as the Allahabad High Court has adjourned for next week the hearing on the plea filed by the mosque committee challenging the January 31 order of the Varanasi district court permitting Hindus to offer prayers there.

During the marathon hearing that took place before Justice Rohit Ranjan Agarwal on Tuesday and Wednesday, senior advocate SFA Naqvi, counsel for the Anjum Intezamia Mosque Committee, which runs the Gyanvapi mosque, maintained that Muslims always had the possession of the mosque and no pooja had ever been offered there.

Advocate Harishankar Jain and Vishnu Jain, appearing for the Hindu side, claimed that it was in 1993 when the pooja was stopped in this particular cellar on the orders of the then Samajwadi Party-led State government. Prior to it, Somnath Vyas and his family were doing regular poojas inside the cellar.

Justice Agarwal, while hearing the arguments of both sides, orally remarked that neither the Vyas family nor the mosque committee could prima facie prove that they were in the possession of the southern cellar of the mosque.

To support his arguments, Mr. Jain said that he would file papers to prove that pooja was happening in the cellar before and even after 1993.

“The pooja happened in the cellar once a year, after 1993. Even Ramcharit Manas path was held in the cellar in 2016 in the presence of authorities concerned,” said Mr. Jain, who concluded that the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), in its scientific survey report, had mentioned that it had found idols of Hindu gods from the southern cellar.

Responding to the arguments, Mr. Naqvi said the order passed by the district judge on January 31 was without any fresh application and hence the court had opted an indirect route to pooja in the cellar.