SC asks Gyanvapi Masjid panel to approach Allahabad HC against order to allow puja

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Thursday asked the Gyanvapi Masjid committee to approach the Allahabad High Court against a Varanasi district court’s order that a Hindu priest can perform prayers before idols in a cellar of the mosque.

Lawyers representing the Anjuman Intezamia Masjid Committee moved the Supreme Court registrar seeking an urgent hearing. The registrar conveyed to them that Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud had asked them to approach the high court.

In their application, advocates Nizam Pasha and Fuzail Ahmad Ayyubi submitted that under the garb of the order, the local administration, in “hot haste”, has deployed a massive police force on the site and is in the process of cutting the grills located at the southern side of the mosque.

The mosque committee approached the Supreme Court’s Registrar saying that under the garb of the January 31 order, the local administration, in hot haste, deployed a massive police force on site and “was in the process of cutting the grills located on the southern side of the mosque”.

As per the letter filed before the Supreme Court, the mosque committee said there was no reason for the administration to undertake this task in “hot haste and “in the dead of the night” as the order passed by the trial court had already given them one week to make the necessary arrangements.

The Muslim side alleged that the administration was in collusion with Hindu petitioners.

“The obvious reason for such unseemly haste is that the administration in collusion with the Hindu petitioners is trying to foreclose any attempt by the mosque managing committee to avail of their remedies against the said order by presenting them with a fait accompli (something that has been done and cannot be changed),” the Muslim side’s letter to the Supreme Court said.

Meanwhile, advocate Vishnu Shankar Jain, representing the Hindu side, said a notice will be filed in the Allahabad High Court regarding the order passed by the district judge.

“We will file a caveat before the Allahabad High Court about the order passed by the district judge yesterday,” Jain wrote on X on Thursday.

A Varanasi court on Wednesday allowed the Hindu devotees to worship inside the sealed basement of the Gyanvapi mosque in Varanasi. As per the court order, Hindu devotees can now offer prayers at ‘Vyas Ka Tekhana’, a restricted area inside the mosque.

The court, during its hearing, also directed the district administration to make the necessary arrangements for the ‘puja’ to be performed by the devotees and asked the Shri Kashi Vishwanath Temple Trust to nominate a priest for the same.