A plea has been filed before the Supreme Court against a November 19 order of the District court directing a survey of the Shahi masjid in Uttar Pradesh's Sambhal..The petition filed by Sambhal Shahi Jama Masjid Committee has sought a stay on the November 19 order on the ground that survey was ordered in "hot haste" after a suit before the District court claimed that the mosque was a temple.The survey was allowed and conducted all within a day which was followed by another survey with a notice of barely 6 hours and these actions have given rise to widespread communal tensions and threatens the secular and democratic fabric of the nation, the plea before the Supreme Court states..A bench of Chief Justice of India Sanjiv Khanna and PV Sanjay Kumar is slated to hear the plea tomorrow. .The petitioner committee has urged the Supreme Court to pass directions stating that surveys should not be ordered and executed as a matter of routine in cases involving different communities over places of worship without hearing the defendants and without allowing sufficient time to the aggrieved persons to seek judicial remedies against the order of survey..On November 19, a civil court in Sambhal directed an advocate commissioner to conduct a survey of the Shahi Jama Masjid in Sambhal.The direction was issued in response to a plea filed by Advocate Hari Shankar Jain and seven others, who had claimed that the mosque was constructed over a demolished temple during the Mughal era.Civil judge (senior division) Aditya Singh had appointed Ramesh Raghav as the advocate commissioner to conduct a survey and submit a report by November 29..Four people were reportedly killed amid stone-pelting and vehicle-torching incidents that followed the order.Violence erupted between protestors and police personnel on November 24 after a team of surveyors arrived in Chandausi town to conduct a second survey of the Shahi Jama Masjid, after the initial survey had been conducted on November 19.An autopsy had ruled out police firing as the cause of the deaths..Meanwhile, a plea has also been filed in the Allahabad High Court seeking a Special Investigation Team (SIT) probe into the communal violence that erupted in Sambhal district following the court-ordered survey.
