A Varanasi court on Tuesday deferred its judgement till November 14 on a plea seeking permission to worship a “shivling” that Hindu petitioners claim was found in the Gyanvapi mosque in Varanasi during a survey of the site, Live Law reported.

In May, the survey report had stated that an oval-shaped object had been found inside an ablution tank at the mosque. Hindu petitioners claimed the object is a shivling, a symbolic representation of the Hindu deity Shiva. Muslims, however, say that it is actually a fountain.

The plea was filed by Kiran Singh, the international general secretary of the Vishwa Vedic Sanatan Sangh, before the district court of Varanasi, on May 24.

In his plea, Singh had also demanded to hand over the entire Gyanvapi complex to the Hindus and ban the entry of Muslims inside its premises.

On May 25, Varanasi District Judge AK Vishvesh had transferred the matter to a fast-track court. The court had reserved its order on the suit on October 27.

Meanwhile, at the hearing of a separate plea last month, the Varanasi district court had said that allowing any kind of survey within the mosque premises will be a violation of the Supreme Court order from May, which had ordered for the area to be protected.

The district court passed the order on a petition filed by the Hindu plaintiffs on September 22. They had sought carbon dating of the oval-shaped object, a method used to determine the age of an archaeological item.

The district court order was challenged before the Allahabad High Court on November 4. The High Court had then issued a notice to the Archaeological Survey of India, asking it to say on whether it was possible to conduct a scientific investigation of the purported shivling.

The Gyanvapi case

In May, a Varanasi civil court had allowed for a video survey of the mosque, which found that an oval object was present on the premises. Based on the plaintiff’s submission, the civil court ordered the area where the oval object was found to be sealed.

When the mosque committee appealed against the civil court order, the Supreme Court, on May 17, directed that the object found during the survey be protected.

It also transferred the case to the district court in Varanasi, ordering it to decide first on the maintainability of the suit under Order 7 Rule 11 of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908, which lays down the conditions when certain pleas will be barred.

On September 12, District Judge AK Vishvesha dismissed the mosque committee’s application and held that the petitioners’ plea to worship Hindu gods was maintainable and could be heard further.

The judge accepted the argument by the Hindu plaintiffs that they did not want to convert the religious nature of the mosque. The court said that the Hindus only wanted to worship the deities inside the mosque complex, something they did incessantly till 1993 and once a year after that.

Following the September 12 verdict, one of the Hindu plaintiffs in the case filed a caveat in the Allahabad High Court, urging the authorities to hear her if the mosque committee moves a revision plea against the Varanasi court’s order.