Hindu Priest Offers Prayers In Gyanvapi Complex After 30 Years as AIMPLB Holds Key Meet

New Delhi: Hours after the Supreme Court asked the Gyanvapi Masjid committee to approach the Allahabad High Court against a Varanasi district court's order that a Hindu priest can perform prayers before idols in a cellar of the mosque adjacent to the Kashi Vishwanath temple, the All India Muslim Personal Law Board on Thursday held a crucial meeting to decide on the further strategy in the matter. Earlier during the day, the lawyers representing the Anjuman Intezamia Masjid Committee had moved the Supreme Court registrar, seeking an urgent hearing. 

Following the Muslim side's latest plea in the matter, the registrar then conveyed to them that Chief Justice DY Chandrachud had asked them to approach the high court. In their application, advocates Nizam Pasha and Fuzail Ahmad Ayyubi had submitted that “under the garb of the order, the local administration, in ‘hot haste’, deployed a massive police force on the site and is in the process of cutting the grills located at the southern side of the mosque”, news agency PTI reported.

"There is no reason for the administration to undertake this task in hot haste in the dead of the night as the order passed by the Trial Court had already given them one week to make the necessary arrangements. The obvious reason for such unseemly haste is that the administration –  in collusion with the plaintiffs – is trying to foreclose any attempt by the Mosque Managing Committee to avail of their remedies against the said order by presenting them with a fait accompli," their letter reportedly read.

Meanwhile, a priest offered prayers at the 'Vyas Ji ka Tehkhana' inside Gyanvapi complex, news agency ANI reported, quoting Vishnu Shankar Jain, the lawyer for the Hindu side in the Gyanvapi case.

Get all the latest updates on the Gyanvapi case here.

The attendees at the key meeting of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board on Thursday included:

• Maulana Arshad Madani and Maulana Mahmood Madani from Jamiat Ulama-e-Hind
• Salim Engineer and Malik Mohtashim from Jamaat-e-Islami Hind
• Syed Kasim Rasool Ilyas and Kamal Farooqui from Muslim Personal Law Board
• Imam Asgar Ali Mehdi from Jamaat-e-Ahl-e-Hadith
• Maulana Niyaz Ahmad Farooqui from Jamiat Ulama-e-Hind