After court order, devotees worship at Gyanvapi Mosque's basement at midnight

Varanasi: Within hours of a district court allowing  a plea by the Hindu plaintiffs seeking worshipping rights in the 'tehkhana' (basement) of the contentious Gyanvapi Mosque, worship took place in the basement around midnight on Wednesday after a gap of almost 30 years. 

According to the sources, barricades were also removed late on Wednesday night and earthen lamps were lit in the complex by the devotees and 'aarti' was also performed.

Eye witness accounts said that a large number of devotees had gathered outside the temple to visit the basement, known as 'Vyasji ka Tehkhana' as the family members of one Somenath Vyas used to worship there for several decades. The worship had come to halt after November 1993, when the then Mulayam Singh Yadav ordered to barricade the entrance and banned the 'puja', according to the Hindu litigants.

The court allowed worshipping at the basement by the Vyas family and a priest to be arranged by the Kashi Vishwanath Temple Trust. 

The district court had allowed worshipping in the Mosque's basement and directed the district magistrate of Varanasi to make necessary arrangements in this regard within a week's time. The court had earlier handed over the maintenance and security of the basement to the district administration in Varanasi. 

The lawyer for the Hindu side termed the order as 'historic' and ''turning point'' in the Kashi Vishwanath Temple-Gyanvapi Mosque dispute and sought to liken the court order to the order by a court to open the locks of the Ram Temple on February 1, 1986. ''It is the first step toward total liberation of the Kashi Vishwanath Temple,'' the lawyer added.

The Anjuman Intezamiya, which looked after the Mosque and had opposed the plea contending that the basement was part of the Mosque and that the right to worship there could not be granted. It said that it would challenge the order in the High Court.

The premises had been a bone of contention between the two communities for the past several decades but there was renewed clamor to ''take back'' the Kashi Vishwanath Temple premises by the saffron outfits after the favourable decision of the apex court in the Ram Temple case. 

The Hindu petitioners contended that a part of the temple had been demolished by the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb in the 17th century. The Muslim side contended that the Mosque existed before the reign of Aurangzeb and also claimed that the same had also been mentioned in the land records.

The Hindu side's lawyer had earlier claimed that the report of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), which conducted a scientific survey of the contentious Gyanvapi Mosque premises in Varanasi and submitted the survey report in the district court earlier, found evidence of a Hindu temple there.

The lawyer of the Muslim plaintiffs in the Kashi Vishwanath-Gyanvapi Mosque case, however, refuted claims  and said that  ''broken idols'' were no proof there existed a Hindu temple in the Gyanvapi Mosque complex.