New Delhi: Aligning with the claims of the Hindu plaintiffs in the Gyanvapi Masjid matter and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, at least two senior Bharatiya Janata Party leaders have publicly claimed that they had performed puja facing the walls of the mosque or in its basement before 1993.This comes at a time when the Varanasi administration, executing the controversial orders of a district court, supervised the installation of idols of Hindu deities inside the southern cellar of the mosque and arranged prayer rituals by a Hindu priest there. The administration has also cut a portion of the steel barricade that secures the mosque to allow the entry of the Hindu priests.The caretakers of the mosque have described as “false and baseless” the claims by a Hindu plaintiff that idols of Hindu deities existed inside the basement of the mosque and that they used to be worshipped by his ancestors till the mosque was barricaded in December 1993 following Supreme Court orders in the aftermath of the Babri Masjid demolition.Keshav Prasad MauryaSpeaking at an event in Lucknow on February 3, Keshav Prasad Maurya, Uttar Pradesh deputy chief minister, claimed that till 1993, the basement of the mosque, “Vyas ji ka tehkhana” was open and people would offer prayers there.“I also had the good fortune of doing ‘darshan’ there. But in 1993 it was stopped,” Maurya said at the “Shri Ram Darbar”, an event organised by a newly-launched right-wing platform Shri Guru Vasishtha Nyas.Maurya, who described the puja inside the basement of the mosque as a “historic” event, also said that if the BJP government, of which he was a part, wanted it could have opened the basement of the mosque for Hindu prayers but it chose to not intervene.The BJP leaders as well as members of Hindutva groups have claimed that the darshan of Hindu deities near the wall of the mosque was stopped during the rule of then chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav in 1993. The saffron party has for years tried to appease Hindu voters by referring to the firing on kar sevaks in 1990 when they were attempting to demolish the Babri Masjid. With a court in Varanasi handing over the basement of the Gyanvapi Masjid to Hindus for puja, months ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha election, the BJP is now actively trying to drag the main opposition Samajwadi Party into the controversy as it tries to further polarise Hindu voters.“There is a double engine government working in the country and the state with impartiality. What happened during the Samajwadi Party government in 1993, we could have [altered it] after we formed the government in 2017 but we did not do any such thing. The shiv bhakts and plaintiffs took the shelter of the court’s,” said Maurya.Also read: No Immediate HC Relief, Puja to Continue Inside Gyanvapi Masjid BasementUma Bharti and Alok KumarNot just Maurya, on January 31, hours after the district court order, former union minister Uma Bharti – one of the most recognisable women of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement of the early 1990s – also claimed that she had worshipped the “idols inscribed” on the walls of the Gyanvapi Masjid.“The Varanasi district court decision on Gyanvapi is pleasant. I have myself worshipped the idols inscribed on the walls of Gyanvapi in 1993,” said Bharti.She sought a “final solution” to the dispute and said that the land on which the Gyanvapi Masjid in Varanasi and the Shahi Eidgah Masjid in Mathura stand, be handed over to Hindus for the construction of temples.The VHP too has made a similar claim in public declaring the southern basement of the mosque as a “temple.” The far-right organization affiliated to the ruling dispensation said that till 1993, “regular puja archana” of the deities was going on in the basement of the Gyanvapi Masjid.“In 1993, the administration had, in an arbitrary action, barricaded the area, prohibited the Hindus from going to the temple and stopped the puja archana,” VHP international working president Alok Kumar said.Also read: A Day Before Retiring, Varanasi Judge Hands Over Gyanvapi Masjid Basement to Hindus For WorshipThe role of the Samajwadi PartyIn their suit filed in 2022, Rakhi Singh and four other Hindu women, made a similar claim that the devotees of Lord Shiva were performing daily puja and worship of Maa Shringar Gauri and other visible and invisible deities within the “old temple” continuously till 1990 when the state government in view of the Ayodhya movement put restrictions on the daily puja. Since 1993, the district administration under the oral orders of the state government allowed devotees to perform puja only once a year, on the 4th day of Vasantik Navratra in Chaitra, Rakhi Singh claimed.In the opposition in UP, Samajwadi Party has so far not openly rebutted the claims made by the BJP, VHP and the Hindu plaintiffs.After the district administration started puja inside the basement in the early hours of February 1, SP president Akhilesh Yadav criticized the developments, saying that “what weare seeing now is a concerted effort to go beyond the due process and prevent any legal recourse that can be taken.”Yadav, while stressing on the fact that the district court had asked the administration to comply with its order in seven days, said that “due process had to be maintained while following any court order.”SP Rajya Sabha MP Ram Gopal Yadav was asked by journalists outside Parliament on February 2 to comment on the BJP’s claims that Mulayam Singh Yadav had stopped puja in the basement of the Mosque during his rule.A visibly irritated Ram Gopal Yadav responded, “Who is saying Mulayam Singh stopped prayers? Only idiots can say like this (sic).”He also argued that court decisions were not always correct or absolute.“Nothing is absolutely correct. Nothing is absolutely perfect. Every decision, for one side it is right, for another side it is wrong,” he said.Also read: Understanding the Gyanvapi Mosque Case: What Does the Places of Worship Act Say?‘There is no limit to their lying’The Anjuman Intezamia Masajid Comittee Varanasi, which manages the Gyanvapi Masjid, in a new statement condemned the action by the court and administration as “one-sided.”“We want to assure you that we will fight for the protection and security of the Jama Masjid Gyanvapi till our last breath,” Maulana Abdul Batin Nomani, general secretary of the Anjuman Intezamia Committee, said in a note addressed to Muslims.The Masjid committee has maintained, inside and outside court, that question of stopping Hindus from conducting puja from December 1993 did not arise as no member of the Vyas family ever carried out puja in the cellar. No idol was ever present inside the basement, the committee said, stressing that it had always been under their occupation.S. M. Yasin, joint secretary of the Anjuman Intezamia Masajid, dismissed the claims made by the BJP leaders that they had offered prayers in the basement of the mosque or facing its walls till at least 1993.“All lies. There is no limit to their lying. No such puja has ever happened. The plaintiff did not provide any evidence in court,” Yasin said.In 1996, some people did try to offer puja to “Maa Shringar Gauri” but they were chased away by the administration, said he.Yasin also questioned the district administration’s act of installing new idols inside the basement of the mosque in the middle of the night when the district court had on January 31 only directed the administration to conduct the puja and “rag-bhog” of the “idols” inside the tehkhana through a pujari appointed by the Shri Kashi Vishwanath Temple Trust, which manages the adjoining Kashi Vishwanath Mandir.“There was no order to go and keep new idols there when the plaintiff had already claimed that there were idols present inside. How come the ASI did not find the idols during its survey,” asked Yasin.He compared the situation to the surreptitious planting of idols of Ram Lalla inside the Babri Masjid in 1949 with the support of the then district magistrate K.K Nair who went on to become a Bharatiya Jan Sangh MP.“In both cases, the idols were planted surreptitiously in the night. In 1949, the administration facilitated it. In 2024, the administration themselves carried out the act,” said Yasin.Also read: ‘Kashi-Mathura Baaqi Hain’: Why the Ayodhya Verdict Won’t Offer Any Respite From Saffron HatredBall in courtHindu prayers inside the basement of the Gyanvapi Masjid will continue at least till February 6 as the Allahabad High Court on Friday did not grant any relief to the caretakers of the mosque seeking a stay on the district court’s order of handing over the basement to Hindus for puja.The court directed the mosque management committee to file a fresh, amended appeal against the district court order and said it would hear the matter on February 6.District judge A. K Vishvesha on January 31 directed the district administration to make arrangements for puja and other Hindu activities inside the southern tehkhana (cellar) of the mosque within seven days.The Varanasi court order came days after the Archaeological Survey of India in its survey report of the Gyanvapi Masjid claimed that a “large Hindu temple” existed there prior to the construction of the existing structure i.e the mosque and that parts of the temple were modified and used in the construction of the Islamic place of worship. The masjid committee is yet to submit a detailed objection to the report but has disagreed with the conclusions of the ASI.The court passed the order on an application filed by a local priest Shailendra Kumar Pathak of the Acharya Ved Vyas Peeth temple, who had sought rights to worship the Maa Shringar Gauri and other alleged visible and invisible deities he claimed were in the cellar of the mosque.The caretakers of the mosque rejected all claims made by Pathak that there were idols kept inside the previously-sealed cellar and that his ancestors used to carry out puja inside the cellar.Judge Vishvesha, however, ruled in favour of the Hindu plaintiff, and directed the district administration to make necessary iron fencing for the purpose of puja. The district magistrate had on January 24 completed the process of taking over the cellar after the court on January 17 directed the District Magistrate to keep the cellar secure and appointed him as the receiver.In his application, Pathak claimed that there were idols kept in the southern cellar of the mosque and that his ancestors as priests conducted worship of the idols kept there. However, Pathak further claimed, “Pujari Vyas ji,” or Somnath Vyas, his maternal grandfather, was prevented from entering the barricaded area of the mosque after December 1993. The rag-bhog and sanskar rituals were also stopped, Pathak claimed.He claimed that ancient Hindu idols and several other religious items linked to the Hindu religion were inside the cellar. “It is necessary to carry out regular puja of the murtis (idols) inside the tehkhana,” he said.