UP: Gyanvapi mosque, Kashi Vishwanath temple engage in land swap

The committee governing the Gyanvapi Masjid in Varanasi has given 1,700 sq feet of land outside the mosque to the Kashi Vishwanath Temple Trust in exchange for a piece of land measuring 1,000 sq feet.

Both the plots are equal in value, Sunil Verma, Chief Executive Officer of the Kashi Vishwanath Temple Trust said.

The land given to the temple is part of the property of the Waqf Board. As it could not be bought, a plot which was equal in value was handed over to the masjid committee, Verma said.

In April, a Varanasi court had ordered an archaeological survey of the Kashi Vishwanath temple and the Gyanvapi mosque premises to resolve a decades-old dispute involving the two shrines.

The court had ordered the archaeological survey of a centuries-old mosque complex abutting the famous Kashi Vishwanath temple, saying the exercise was required to decide on pleas that allege the mosque was built by Mughal emperors after partially demolishing a Hindu shrine.

The suit was filed in 1991 seeking restoration of the ancient temple at the site where the Gyanvapi mosque currently stands.

On March 15, the Allahabad High Court reserved its judgment in various pleas, which had challenged the maintainability of the 1991 suit before the Varanasi trial court, seeking restoration of an ancient temple at the site where the Gyanvapi mosque at Varanasi now stands.