The court of Varanasi's senior-most judge, hearing the Gyanvapi mosque case on orders by the Supreme Court, today said that it will first hear the mosque committee's contention that filming inside the mosque carried out last week is illegal.
The process of hearing in the case will start on Thursday, with the "maintainability" issue coming first. It also ordered the two sides to file affidavits with their objections to the survey report within a week.
The mosque committee says that filming at the mosque violates a 1991 law that prevents the alteration of the character of any place of worship in the country. It wanted the "maintainability" case to be heard first, which the court has agreed to.
In orders passed on Friday, the Supreme Court had asked the Varanasi court to decide on priority whether the survey at the Gyanvapi mosque and the petition that led to the survey was 'maintainable' or not.