The Allahabad High Court on Monday (February 26) allowed Hindus to continue offering worship in the southern cellar of the Gyanvapi mosque, dismissing an appeal by the Anjuman Intezamia Masjid Committee against the Varanasi district court order that first allowed this. The cellar is called 'Vyasji ka tehkhana', after the Vyas family who claim to own the property. In 1993, the Uttar Pradesh government under Mulayam Singh Yadav had orally ordered the Vyas family to stop conducting pujas in the cellar. The Allahabad HC said the state order “restraining Vyas family from performing religious worship and rituals and also by the devotees was a continuous wrong being perpetuated.” How the case ended up in Allahabad HC In connection with the ongoing dispute over the religious character of the Gyanvapi mosque, the Vyas family filed a suit in September 2023. The Vyas family claims that the Vyasji ka tehkhana (the mosque cellar) has been in the possession of the family since 1551 and prayers were being offered here routinely until the 1993 UP government order. On January 31 this year, the District Court in Varanasi allowed worship to take place in the cellar. What the mosque committee argued The management committee of the mosque challenged this order at the Allahabad HC. They argued that the civil court in Din Mohammed v. The Secretary of State for India (1937) had already declared that the mosque was Hanafi Muslim Waqf property and Muslims were entitled to the land. This, they claimed, included the land underneath the mosque, such as the cellar. The management committee also relied on Section 4 of the Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act, 1991 (POW Act). This provision essentially locks the religious character of a place of worship to what it was on August 15, 1947. This, they argued, would mean that the court's findings in Din Mohammed are final and the religious character of the mosque cannot be converted by allowing the Vyas family to conduct prayers in the cellar. What respondents relied on The Vyas family argued that the Din Mohammed ruling, in fact, worked in their favor. They relied on a map submitted by the Secretary of State for India, which, they stated, clearly demarcated the Vyasji ka tehkhana. As this map was not a source of contention and the Vyas family was never made a party in the Din Mohammed case, the cellar remains in the “possession” of the Vyas family, they argued. They further claimed that as the mosque never had possession over the Vyasji ka tehkhana, the state government could not have restrained the family from conducting prayers. Here, the respondents also relied on the PoW Act, claiming that the state order restraining worship changed the religious character of the tehkhana, where prayers had been routinely conducted. Implications of order The Allahabad HC passed an interim order in favor of the respondents based on a prima facie (first impression) analysis of the facts. It stated, “The existence of Vyas tehkhana (cellar) owned by Vyas family in the year 1937 is a prima facie proof of the continuous possession claimed by the plaintiff till the year 1993.” The court also stated, “Prima facie I find that act of the State Government since year 1993 restraining Vyas family from performing religious worship and rituals and also by the devotees was a continuous wrong being perpetuated.” Following the Varanasi District Court’s order permitting worship in the tehkhana on January 31, the lead petitioner in the main Gyanvapi Dispute, Rakhi Singh, had filed an application for a further ASI survey into all the remaining cellars in Gyanvapi to determine their religious character. The Allahabad HC order provides a possible path to investigate the religious character of these cellars as well, on the basis of possession and continuous worship.
