The Allahabad High Court on Wednesday extended the stay till October 31 on a Varanasi court order directing the Archaeological Survey of India to conduct a survey of the Gyanvapi mosque complex, reported PTI.

A bench of Justice Prakash Padia has listed the case for next hearing on October 18.

The case pertains to a petition filed by a person named VS Rastogi, who claimed that Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb had demolished a portion of the 2,000-year-old Kashi Vishwanath temple in 1664 to build the mosque.

This petition is different from the plea in which five Hindu women have claimed that an image of the Hindu deity Shringar Gauri exists at the mosque and have sought permission to offer daily prayers there.

In his petition, Rastogi demanded that the land on which the Gyanvapi mosque has been built should be handed over to the Hindu community.

In another petition filed on behalf of Vishweshwar, the main deity of the temple, Rastogi sought direction to the Archaeological Survey to undertake a survey of the mosque. He had argued that the first additional district judge of Varanasi ordered the lower court in 1998 to take evidence of the entire Gyanvapi compound for determining the “religious status or character of the compound”.

In 1998, the Anjuman Intezamia Masjid Committee had moved the Allahabad High Court saying that the dispute could not be adjudicated by a civil court as it was barred by the the Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act, states that the religious character of a place of worship as it existed on August 15, 1947, cannot be changed.

The High Court had then stayed the proceedings in the civil court.

In February 2020, the petitioners again approached the lower court with a plea to resume the hearing as the High Court had not extended the stay in the last six months.

On August 30, the High Court extended the interim stay of the survey till September 30.

Also read Why UP court order asking ASI to survey Kashi-Gyanvapi mosque complex is legally unsound