VARANASI: The advocates of both parties in the Gyanvapi-Shringar Gauri case on Saturday said that they won’t be able to file objections on May 31 as they haven’t received the photos and video footages of the court commission videography survey of the premises.
Advocate of the Gyanvapi mosque management committee, Anjuman Intejamia Masajid (AIM), Abhay Nath Yadav and the petitioners’ advocate Subhash Nandan Chaturvedi said that it had become necessary for them to seek an extension of the date for filing objections regarding the survey as they haven’t received the court commission report till Saturday.
The objections could only be prepared by going through the visual facts, they said.
Yadav said that argument by his team of AIM advocates on maintainability of the case would continue on Monday.
The advocates said that citing technical reasons, the district judge’s court staff expressed inability in releasing the compact discs of the photos and video footage of the court-mandated survey of Gyanvapi mosque on Friday. “As the court is closed on Saturday and Sunday, the process of receiving the CDs of the photos and video footage would be restarted on Monday. More time will also be sought from the court to file objections,” Chaturvedi said.
Also on Friday, an AIM advocate Rayees Ahmed Ansari moved an application in the district judge court, requesting to release the CDs of photos and video footage to the advocates of both parties only with an instruction that it is not made public by anyone.
Earlier, the copies of the court-mandated Gyanvapi survey footage and photographs couldn't be given to the litigants on May 25 as the number of applicants had swollen beyond reasonable limits. District government counsel (civil) Mahendra Prasad Pandey said that the number of applicants seeking Gyanvapi survey video footage and photographs collected during the court commission work in Gyanvapi mosque from May 6 to 16 and submitted with a report in eight chips of 32 GB each had gone drastically high on May 25 as many persons who were not conneted to any party of the case had also applied for it.
On the petition 696/2021 by Rakhi Singh of Delhi and Laxmi Devi, Sita Sahu, Manju Vyas and Rekha Pathak before the court of civil judge (senior division) on August 18, 2021, seeking worshipping of Shringar Gauri and other deities in Gyanvapi premises, a advocate commissioner was appointed on April 8 for the videography survey of the Gyanvapi mosque.
The court commission survey took place between May 6 and 16. On the last day of survey, Hindu parties claimed unearthing of a shivling in the ablution pond of Gyanvapi, after which the pond was sealed on court's order. The court commission report was submitted by special advocate commissioner Vishal Singh on May 19 and a day after it the Supreme Court transferred the matter from the court of civil judge (senior division) Ravi Kumar Diwakar to the district judge court on May 20 and also directed it to first decide its maintainability.
