- CJI tells mosque management: “What’s frivolous for you, is faith for the other side”
New Delhi, Aug 4.
The Supreme Court on Friday upheld an Allahabad High Court order directing the ASI to carry out a complete scientific survey of the Gyanvapi mosque complex. The survey will not involve excavation and will not be intrusive, the top court said.
The ASI will take care to ensure that all this carried out without any damage the existing structures inside the complex, a bench led by Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud said. The bench also comprised Justices J.B. Pardiwala and Manoj Mishra.
The survey had been ordered by the Allahabad High Court.
An earlier attempt to carry out a survey, on the spot on which the Hindu parties and mosque managing committee have been making competing claims, had been stayed by the top court.
While the managing committee claimed that the spot was a wuzukhana and had a fountain, the Hindu parties, which want to take over the mosque complex and worship there, claim that the fountain was in fact a shivling.
The mosque is situated next to the Kashi Vishwanath temple and figures on the right-wing list of places of worship that would have to be reclaimed back for the Hindus.
The district court later rejected a demand for a complete survey but this was overturned by the Allahabad High Court.
The mosque managing committee went to the top court against the ASI survey.
The committee, represented by senior advocate Huzeffa Ahmadi, argued that the survey could not have been ordered without hearing the managing committee’s preliminary objections against the filing of any petition reopening an issue which was supposed to be capped under the Place of Worship (Special Provisions) Act, 1991.
The Act held out the assurance that any mosque that exists as on Aug 15, 1947, would continue to be a mosque and a temple would continue to be a temple. The Supreme Court had spoken in glowing terms on this Act when it had handed over the entire area in which the demolished Babri Masjid once stood for a Ram temple at the spot in Ayodhya.
The Act has since been challenged in the top court and is yet to be heard.
At one point in the proceedings today, Ahmadi asked the CJI led bench if it would order a similar survey in respect of another structure. The CJI was quick to say: “What is frivolous for you is faith for the other side.” A similar survey was carried out in the Ayodhya case too and was leaked even before it was used as evidentiary evidence in court in the case.
Ahmadi urged the top court to order that the survey results be kept in a sealed cover and not be leaked, but to no avail. The survey will let the genie out of the battle, he said, citing the earlier Ayodhya experience. “I am being deprived of my property piece by piece,” he said. All his pleas for some relief, however, were turned down.
Ahmadi also accused the Uttar Pradesh government of acting in a partisan manner on the matter.
