On Monday, Varanasi district judge Ajaya Krishna Vishvesha decided that the plea by five women to worship Hindu gods Shringar Gauri, Ganesha and other deities within the Gyanvapi mosque complex was “maintainable” and could proceed in the courts.
The mosque management committee had argued that several laws, such as the Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act, 1991, which was passed in the backdrop of the demolition of the Babri Masjid, barred any plea seeking to change the religious nature of a place. The 1991 law says that the religious character of any place of worship as it existed on August 15, 1947, shall be preserved.
However, the court accepted the argument by the Hindu plaintiffs that they did not want to convert the religious nature of the mosque. They only wanted to worship Hindu deities inside the mosque complex, something which had been happening till 1993, they claimed.
The background
In August 2021, a plea was filed before a Varanasi civil court by five Hindu devotees asking for permission to offer daily prayers at the Gyanvapi mosque, which the plaintiffs claimed housed several Hindu deities. Subsequently, in May, the court allowed for a video survey of the mosque, which found that an oval object…
