Hours after Varanasi court order, prayers offered inside 'Vyas Ji ka Tehkhana' at Gyanvapi mosque

Earlier in the day, the Supreme Court asked the committee to approach the High Court against the Varanasi district court's order on Wednesday.

The district court on Wednesday stated that a priest will be allowed to perform prayers before the idols in the basement of the Gyanvapi mosque, in the latest development in the ongoing legal battle over the Masjid adjacent to the Kashi Vishwanath temple.

“Vyas Ji ka Tehkhana was opened at around 10.30 pm on Wednesday for prayers after 31 years,” Pandey told PTI.

District Magistrate S Rajlingam informed that the priest performed the 'Shayan Aarti' of the deities inside the southern part of the mosque. “A gate was also installed after cutting steel grills near the southern cellar doors,” Rajlingam was quoted as saying by the Times of India.

As per officials, the puja was also performed early morning on Thursday. Few locals claimed that 'aarti' of Goddess Lakshmi and Lord Ganesh was performed after cleaning the Tehkhana.

On Wednesday, the members of the Kashi-Vishwanath Trust gathered around 9.30 pm and the barricades before the Nandi statue facing the mosque's 'wazukhana' were removed, the PTI report added, quoting official sources in the district administration.

Earlier, the court had ordered the local administration to make arrangements for prayers in the basement within seven days.

District Court Judge A K Vishvesha's order came a day after the Archeological Survey of India's (ASI) report on the mosque complex was made public.

The survey conducted by ASI, which was ordered by the same court in connection with a related case, stated that the Gyanvapi mosque was constructed during Aurangzeb's rule over the remains of a Hindu temple.

According to the Hindu side counsel, Madan Mohan Yadav, the court's order on Wednesday came while hearing a plea by Shailendra Kumar Pathak, who claimed that his maternal grandfather, priest Somnath Vyas, offered prayers till December 1993 at the basement of the mosque.

Pathak alleged that puja at the complex was stopped during former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav's tenure after Ayodhya's Babri Masjid was demolished on December 6, 1992.

However, the Muslim side claimed during the hearing that no idols existed in the basement of the Gyanvapi complex. Hence, there was no question of prayers being offered there till 1993.

Advocate Mumtaz Ahmed, who represented the Muslim side, said that they would move the High Court against the district court's order.