Varanasi: ASI granted one more week to submit Gyanvapi report

VARANASI: The Varanasi district court has extended the deadline for the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) to present a comprehensive scientific survey report of the Gyanvapi mosque complex.

District Judge A K Vishvesh gave additional time to the ASI and fixed December 18 as the next date of hearing in the matter. This is the sixth time that the court has granted an extension to the ASI to file its survey report.

Madan Mohan Yadav, counsel for the Hindu side, said that the ASI in its application expressed its inability to submit the report on Monday citing the ill health of its superintendent archaeologist Avinash Mohanty who had suffered a sudden increase in blood pressure and was unable to attend the court.

Earlier, the court had granted additional time to the ASI on September 6, October 5, November 2, November 17 and November 30. The ASI started the survey in the barricaded area of the Gyanvapi premises, excluding its sealed section, on August 4, following court orders to determine whether the 17th-century mosque was constructed over a pre-existing structure of a Hindu temple.

On November 30, the district court had asked the ASI to submit the survey report of the Gyanvapi complex by December 11. In its application, the ASI had stated that its experts are working on various types of data collected by archaeologists, surveyors and other experts, etc., and assimilation of information generated by different experts and different tools is a difficult and slow process and it will take some more time to complete the report for final submission.

The Gyanvapi committee had also moved the Supreme Court against the high court’s order. The apex court had, on August 4, refused to stay the high court’s order on the ASI survey.

In its order, the bench of Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud and justices J B Pardiwala and Manoj Misra, however, asked the ASI not to carry out any invasive act during

the survey.