Another row has erupted over the excavation and iconography of idols at Delhi’s Qutub Minar amid the Gyanvapi Mosque controversy. Earlier today, reports emerged that the Ministry of Culture has directed the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) to conduct an excavation at the Qutub Minar complex as idols of Hindu deities are found at that place. However, later, Union Culture Minister GK Reddy said that no such decision had been taken.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After the Gyanvapi mosque row reached the Supreme Court, a petition has been made to conduct a survey of Shahi Dargah in Mathura and the Qutub Minar complex in Delhi. This move came after a 1200-year-old Lord Narsingha idol, Lord Ganesha, and Lord Krishna’s idols were found inside Qutub Minar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to the reports, the Centre has instructed ASI to conduct a survey and start an evacuation plan in the complex to dig out the facts. This move comes after some members of the right-wing group- United Hindu Front chanted Hanuman Chalisa outside the heritage monument on May 10 and demanded to rename the monument Vishnu Stambha.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bhagwan Goyal, chief of a right-wing organization, alleged that the approximately 1000-year-old monument was originally a Vishnu Stambh which was built by Hindu king Vikramaditya Singh and claimed that the complex had 27 temples which were later destroyed by Qutub-ud-din-Aibak to build Qutub Minar. Goyal said people can still find idols of Hindu deities in the complex.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The ASI has also been ordered to submit its excavation report to the Ministry of Culture. Excavation can be started to the south of the minaret at a distance of 15 meters from the mosque.\u00a0Govind Mohan, the Secretary of the Ministry of Culture, made the decisions on Saturday, May 21 during a site visit with officials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Excavation will also take place at Lalkot Fort and Anangtal in Mehrauli, in addition to the Qutub Minar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After the Gyanvapi mosque row reached the Supreme Court, a petition has been made to conduct a survey of Shahi Dargah in Mathura and the Qutub Minar complex in Delhi.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":326932,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Is Qutub Minar next? Amid Gyanvapi mosque row, government directs ASI to conduct excavation at heritage monument\n\n#QutubMinar\n","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[125714],"tags":[131751,131753,131750,131752],"yst_prominent_words":[6642,7465,6328,11174,4390,9287,12840],"ppma_author":[140547],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/d2r2ijn7njrktv.cloudfront.net\/apnlive\/uploads\/2022\/05\/22160809\/qutub-minar-1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"authors":[{"term_id":140547,"user_id":60,"is_guest":0,"slug":"kritika-bobal","display_name":"Kritika Bobal","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/68ece5bdb711fc0978815e94598a84ec?s=96&r=g"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326918"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/60"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=326918"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326918\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/326932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=326918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=326918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=326918"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=326918"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=326918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}