UP CM Adityanath breaks silence on Gyanvapi mosque controversy, says ‘a historical mistake that should be rectified…’

livemint.com:

Yogi Adityanath on Monday said that the Muslim community should admit that it was a ‘historical mistake’ and rectify it. “If we call it a masjid, there will be disagreement over that. What is a trishul doing inside a mosque.

There is a jyotirling, there are idols. Every bit of the architecture speaks about it" “I personally feel, the proposal should have come from the Muslim community admitting that they had made a historical blunder and want rectification in that regard," Adityanath said while speaking to ANI. The district court of Varanasi had recently ordered the Archaeological Department of India (ASI) to conduct a scientific survey of the Gyanvapi mosque complex, except for the "wazookhana" (a small reservoir for Muslim devotees to perform ritual ablutions), to determine if the mosque was built at a place where a temple existed earlier.

But the Muslim side reached the Supreme Court, which directed the high court to hear the matter. The Allahabad High Court had on Thursday reserved its decision in Gyanvapi survey case. The court will pronounce the verdict on August 3.

Till then the stay on ASI survey will remain in force. Meanwhile, hitting back at the BJP, Samajwadi Party leader Swami Prasad Maurya said if they look for a temple in every mosque then people would start searching for a Buddhist monastery in every temple. "The Badrinath and Kedarnath temples in Uttarakhand, the Jagannath Temple in Puri, the Ayyappa Temple in Kerala and the Vithoba temple in Pandharpur (Maharashtra) were Buddhist monasteries.

These Buddhist monasteries were demolished and then Hindu religious shrines came up there. They were Buddhist monasteries till the eighth century," he said on Sunday. He said his intention is not to turn these