A 30-member Archaeological Survey of India team halted a survey here of the Gyanvapi mosque -- just hours after beginning the exercise Monday morning -- following a Supreme Court order.
The Varanasi district court had ordered the ASI Friday to conduct a survey, using technologies like ground penetrating radar and excavations, if necessary, to determine if a temple existed earlier at the same place.
The mosque is located next to the Vishwanath temple.
The Supreme Court order came while the ASI team was inside the complex. It directed halting the exercise till 5 pm on Wednesday, giving time to the mosque committee to appeal in the Allahabad High Court against the district court's direction.
Varanasi Divisional Commissioner Kaushal Raj Sharma confirmed that the survey work stopped after the top court's order.
The ASI team entered the Gyanvapi complex around 7 am. Subhash Nandan Chaturvedi, a counsel for the Hindu petitioners, said the survey work lasted for about four hours.
The complex was inspected and measured and teams were deployed at its four corners, he said. The proceedings were recorded by cameras installed at the four corners of the mosque, he added.
The stones and bricks at the complex were inspected, he said.
"We are sure that the entire complex belongs to the temple and the result of the survey will be in our favour," he said.
Vishnu Shankar Jain, another counsel for the Hindu side, said, "We will go to the high court and argue on this issue within two days."
He said the Muslim side gave a wrong impression that vandalism was going on in the complex when only measuring and mapping was being carried out.
Maulana Khalid Rasheed Farangi Mahali, a member of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board and Lucknow's city qazi, welcomed the Supreme Court's stay on the ASI survey.
He hoped the Muslim side would soon file a petition in the high court.
"No Muslim builds a mosque by demolishing someone's place of worship or by occupying someone's land, he said. So repeatedly making such claims about mosques was wrong, and the practice should stop now," he added.
Besides the ASI team, the lawyers of Hindu petitioners were also present at the site, counsel Madan Mohan Yadav said.
The district court order allowed representatives of both sides to be part of the survey.
However, citing the Supreme Court hearing scheduled for Monday, the lawyers for Muslim litigants had demanded that the survey should be postponed, Yadav said.
A Vishwanath temple spokesperson said the survey at the adjacent mosque did not cause any problems, and security forces were deployed in large numbers.
"Baba's devotees continued to do darshan and worship in a proper manner after queuing up like on all Mondays of the Sawan," he said.
By 8.30 am, about 1.75 lakh Shiva devotees had performed prayers.
Varanasi Police Commissioner Ashok Mutha Jain and District Magistrate S Rajalingam held a meeting with both the Hindu and Muslim sides to the dispute on Sunday night to share information about the survey.
District Judge A K Vishvesh had directed the ASI on Friday to submit a report to the court by August 4, along with video clips and photographs of the survey proceedings.
The judge had exempted from the survey the mosque's 'wazukhana', where a structure claimed by Hindu litigants to be a 'shivling' exists, following an earlier Supreme Court order protecting that spot in the complex.
The mosque management says that the structure is part of fountain at the wazukhana, where devotees perform ritual ablutions.
