The Allahabad High Court on Tuesday fixed September 18 for further hearing on a petition challenging the maintainability of a suit seeking "restoration" of a temple where the Gyanvapi mosque stands in Varanasi, after neither the petitioner nor the defendant appeared in the case.

The court of Chief Justice Pritinker Diwakar had allowed a virtual hearing in the case due to lawyers' strike.

The petition was filed by Anjuman Intezamia Masjid, the committee which manages the Gyanvapi mosque located next to the Kashi Vishwanath temple. The chief justice is hearing the suit which was earlier heard in the court of Justice Prakash Padia.

During the last hearing in the matter on August 28, the chief justice had accepted the mosque committee's plea seeking time to study the case afresh and adjourned the matter till September 12.

The court will also hear a petition challenging a Varanasi court direction in 2021 to conduct a survey of the Gyanvapi mosque by a commission headed by an advocate.

During the course of the August 28 hearing, a mention was made on behalf of the mosque committee that the matter was heard at length by another single judge of the high court and judgment was reserved by it.

Counsels of both sides had argued at length before the single-judge bench, therefore, proprietary demands that the judgment has to be delivered by that bench, the mosque committee had said.

However, the chief justice had said according to the high court rules, when a judgment in a case is not delivered even after completion of the hearing, the case is deemed to stand released and the chief justice being "master of the roster" has the power either to send the case to another bench or hear the case himself.

The chief justice in the last hearing had said since March 15, 2021, the judgment in the case was reserved on several occasions but the same was not delivered following which, the counsel for the mosque committee made a request for the adjournment of the case, saying he needed some time to study it. PTI COR RAJ SNS KVK KVK

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