New Delhi: The Supreme Court Thursday turned down the Gyanvapi mosque management committee’s request to urgently list its application against the Varanasi district judge’s latest order permitting Hindus to pray in the basement of the shrine.
The top court asked the Anjuman Intezamia Masjid to approach the Allahabad High Court if it wanted judicial intervention by a higher court.
Advocate Fuzail Ahmad Ayuubi, representing the mosque management committee, told ThePrint that the SC registry had declined to put up his client’s request to place its case for hearing on Thursday itself.
On Wednesday, the Varanasi district judge gave the go-ahead to offer prayers in the disputed shrine’s basement on an application made by the Hindu side, seeking worshipping rights.
Within hours of the order, the district administration commenced cutting the iron barricade in the middle of the night to make arrangements for Hindu parties to make their offerings.
Ayuubi told ThePrint: “After the order was made available to us, we held deliberations following which it was decided that the mosque management committee should file an application before the top court, which is already seized of its petition that has assailed the right-to-worship suit filed in the trial court on the grounds it was not maintainable.”
As the application was prepared by midnight, the mosque committee’s legal team approached the registrar (listing) with its request to urgently list the application.
However, the team was told it would be informed Thursday morning. At 8 am, the team received a call from the apex court registry that its request had been turned down by higher officials. It was asked to move an appropriate application before the Allahabad High Court.
In its letter of extreme urgency, the committee is said to have provided details of how the Varanasi district administration swung into action soon after a copy of the order was given to the parties in the case.
The letter also said that even before the mosque management committee could take steps to challenge the order, the administration had undertaken immediate steps to make arrangements for the “puja” to be “conducted at the southern side of the mosque by early morning”.
In the garb of implementing the order, the local administration, “in hot haste”, deployed a massive police force on the site and was in the “process of cutting the grills located on the southern side of the mosque so as to create an entrance therefrom into the mosque premises to allow puja in the basement of the mosque”, the committee’s letter stated.
According to the letter, the action taken by the Varanasi administration was against the “letter and spirit” of two orders of the Supreme Court — passed on 17 and 20 May 2022 — which directed the district magistrate of the city to ensure that “namaz and other religious observations at the mosque are not disturbed”.
Actions taken in haste in the middle of the night was an overreach of the top court orders, the letter said.
“The obvious reason for such unseemly haste is that the administration in collusion with plaintiffs (Hindu side) is trying to foreclose any attempt by the mosque management committee to avail their remedies against the said order by presenting them with a fait accompli,” the letter has stated.
(Edited by Tikli Basu)
Also read: Varanasi court allows Hindus to offer prayers in sealed basement of Gyanvapi mosque
With respect, a fit case for urgent intervention by the Supreme Court. The sanctity of the Places of Worship Act is being chipped away.