AMN
The District Court of Varanasi has given permission for worship in the basement called Vyaasji ka tahkhana, located in the Gyanvapi complex. District Judge Dr. Ajay Krishna Vishwesh issued an order, in this case, today and said that this decision should be implemented within a week. In this case, after the arguments of both parties were completed yesterday, the District Judge reserved the decision. Describing the court action, the plaintiff’s advocate Vishnu Shankar Jain said that Somnath Vyas’s family used to perform puja in the basement till 1993.
After the order of the then-State government, the worship had been stopped. Recently, during the survey work, the basement was cleaned and on the orders of the court, Vyasji’s basement was handed over to the supervision of the District Magistrate. In such a situation, the application of the plaintiff Shailendra Pathak has been accepted and permission has been given to perform regular puja there.
What is Vyasji ka tehkhana?
Vyasji ka tehkahana is located in the southern area of the mosque’s barricaded complex, facing the Nandi statue placed inside the Kashi Vishwanath complex near the sanctum sanctorum.
The tehkahana has a height of around 7 feet and carpet area of around 900 square feet. Subhash Chaturvedi, the lawyer of the petitioner Shailendra Pathak Vyas, said that the Vyas family had been conducting prayers and other rituals inside the tehkhana for more than 200 years, but the practice was stopped in December 1993.
He said that the tehkhana is located between the Nandi statue and the wuzookhana of the mosque, where Hindu petitioners have alleged that a shivling was found during a court mandated video-graphic survey in 2022.
Why was worship barred here?
The petitioner has argued that ‘Vyasji’s’ entry was prohibited in the tehkhana in December 1993, and hence the prayers being held here had to be discontinued.
On December 4, 1993, Mulayam Singh Yadav of the Samajwadi Party formed the government in UP, ending one year of President’s Rule, imposed after the Kalyan Singh government was dismissed in the wake of the Babri Mosque demolition in Ayodhya in 1992.
“The Mulayam Singh Yadav government prohibited worship inside the Vyasji ka tehkhana in the name of law and order. Before that, Pandit Somnath Vyas had carried out Hindi worship rituals here regularly,” Chaturvedi said.