A team of lawyers and opposing legal parties, led by a court-appointed advocatecommissioner, on Friday surveyed the Shringar Gauri site located at a wall of the Gyanvapi Masjid complex in Varanasi. Ajay Kumar Mishra, the commissioner, conducted the videography of the place without any major incident. While the court order didn’t specifically mention about videography inside the mosque, its caretakers objected to the same.
Last April, a civil judge had appointed the commissioner after five people petitioned that they should be allowed to perform daily darshan, pooja and other rituals of Maa Shringar Gauri and other deities within the old temple complex.
The litigants claimed about the existence of an image of the Goddess on the western wall of the mosque situated adjacent to the Kashi Vishwanath temple. They demanded that the caretakers of the mosques allow daily darshan, prayer, aarti, bhog and other rituals without any restrictions, obstacle and hindrance.
In March, the Allahabad High Court rejected the petition filed by the caretakes of the mosque against the order of the judge appointing a court commissioner to inspect the site.
The survey was conducted by the team on Friday without much ado. There had been some sloganeering in the area, but the situation remained under control.
Kashi Vishwanath temple vs Gyanvapi Mosque
The dispute is pretty much like the Ayodhya Temple-Mosque issue, which was resolved in 2019. In 1991, a bunch of petitioners moved the court contending the mosque was built by the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb after demolishing a temple in 1669. They demand that the mosque be removed, and the land be given to the Hindus. The matter remained dormant until after the Ayodhya verdict. In 2019, an advocate approached the Allahabad High Court demanding that the complex be surveyed by the Archeological Survey of India.
