Gyanvapi case: VVSS dissolved, all cases to be pursued ‘personally’

VARANASI: The Vishwa Vedic Sanatan Sangh (VVSS), an organisation backing the Hindu litigants in the Gyanvapi case, has been “dissolved” along with all its subsidiaries and committees.

VVSS chief Jitendra Singh Visen said he would also request the home ministry to impose a ban on the organisation to ensure nobody gets another outfit registered in the name ever.

He said all the cases in which his family members are petitioners, will now be pursued in individual capacity.

Visen’s niece Rakhi Singh is among the five women who had moved a petition seeking to worship Shringar Gauri and other deities in the Gyanvapi mosque compound and had sought the ASI survey of the premises.

The VVSS central office secretary Suraj Singh issued a statement declaring that following the resignation of the organisation’s national president Santosh Singh on October 4, its central committee has decided to dissolve all the executive committees at national, state, district and divisional units with immediate effect.

Visen said, “The organisation had no income and the expenses of all cases being contested by us are being borne by me and some of my friends. However, controversies were being generated unnecessarily.

We are contesting 171 cases across the country by making our family members or friends a plaintiff in those cases. Each case needs time. Hence, sparing time to run the organisation was proving difficult.”

VVSS had come to lime-light during the hearing of the Shringar Gauri suit. However, with the beginning of the court mandated survey of Gyanvapi mosque in May 2022, differences arose between Visen and advocates of the other four women plaintiffs, Hari Shankar Jain and Vishnu Jain.

Visen strongly opposed the Jains’ demands for carbon dating and scientific investigation of a ‘Shivling’ claimed to have been found in the mosque complex during the court mandated survey and also the transfer of seven Gyanvapi-related cases, including those filed by Visen, to the district judge’s court.

However, after the district judge ordered in May that all seven cases would be merged with the Shringar Gauri suit for hearing, there were several developments indicating a rift within the Visen camp, too.