Gyanvapi case: SC asks ASI not to do any excavation or invasive method for survey at mosque till 11.15am | India News

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Monday asked the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) not to do any excavation or invasive method for survey at Gyanvapi mosque site till 11.15 am.

The court also asked the Solicitor General (SG) Tushar Mehta, who was representing the Uttar Pradesh government, to inform it whether the ASI was conducting any excavation work during the survey. The Gyanvapi management committee has challenged the survey in the apex court.
He informed the apex court that the ASI has not done any excavation, removed/broken a single brick of Gyanvapi mosque and is carrying out only measurement, photography, radar imaging of the area under survey. “No excavation would be carried out for a week,” the SG said.

A 30-member ASI had entered the Gyanvapi complex early on Monday morning to carry out a scientific survey in accordance with court orders to determine if the mosque located next to the Kashi Vishwanath temple was built upon a temple. Lawyers of all the Hindu petitioners to the legal dispute are also present at the spot.
The apex court was hearing a contempt petition filed by the Gyanvapi mosque management committee against the Varanasi district court’s order for an ASI survey of the mosque complex.
The mosque’s ‘wazukhana’ (a small reservoir for Muslim devotees to perform ritual ablutions), where a structure claimed by the Hindu litigants to be a ‘Shivling’ exists, is not a part of the survey, following an earlier Supreme Court order protecting that spot in the complex.
Advocate Subhash Nandan Chaturvedi, representing the Hindu side, said that the result of the survey will be favourable to Hindus.
“We are sure that the whole premise is of temple only. The result of the survey will be favourable to us,” he said.
Last week, Varanasi district judge AK Vishvesha had ordered the ASI survey of Gyanvapi complex on an application moved by four Hindu women on May 16, 2023.
Citing an Allahabad HC’s stay on the survey of the Gyanvapi complex in September 2022, the mosque committee – Anjuman Intezamia Masajid (AIM) – filed an online special leave petition (SLP) in the apex court seeking an urgent hearing in the case. Chief Justice of India DY Chandrchud is likely to take up the petition on Monday.
The petition has also cited the SC’s May 19 stay on Allahabad high court’s order for scientific survey of the purported ‘shivling’ found in the ablution pond of the mosque during a court-mandated survey in May 2022.
The Allahabad HC had on May 12, 2023 allowed the scientific survey of this purported ‘shivling’ but the apex court stayed this order on May 19. Before this, the Allahabad HC, in September 2022, had stayed another order of a Varanasi civil judge, passed in April 2022, for the ASI survey of the Gyanvapi complex.