Varanasi: A portion of the land outside the Gyanvapi Masjid in Varanasi was handed over to the Kashi Vishwanath Temple Trust in trade for one more piece of land.
The committee governing the mosque gave away 1,700 sq. ft of land to the Temple Trust. In return, it bought land measuring 1,000 sq ft of the identical worth.
“Both the plots are equal in value,” Sunil Verma, Chief Executive Officer of the Kashi Vishwanath Temple Trust was quoted as saying by PTI.
The land given to the temple is a component of the property of the Waqf Board. As the land couldn’t be purchased, a plot that was equal in worth was handed over to the masjid committee, Verma mentioned.
Earlier this 12 months in April, a Varanasi court docket had granted permission to the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) to perform a survey of the Kashi Vishwanath temple and Gyanvapi Mosque complicated.
The court docket was listening to a plea filed by a lawyer Vijay Shankar Rastogi looking for the land on which Gyanvapi Mosque stands be transferred to Hindus.
The petitioner claimed that the mosque was constructed by Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb in 1664 after bringing down a portion of the Kashi Vishwanath temple.
In January 2020, the Anjuman Intezamia Masjid Committee had filed an objection towards the petition looking for a survey of the Gyanvapi compound.
