Besides the ASI team, which entered the complex around 7 am, the lawyers of all the Hindu petitioners to the legal dispute are also present at the spot, Madan Mohan Yadav, one of the counsel said

Late on Sunday evening, District Magistrate (DM) S Rajalingam had said the ASI team had reached Varanasi and the survey proceedings inside the Gyanvapi mosque campus would begin from 7 am on Monday

Varanasi Police Commissioner Ashok Mutha Jain and the DM held a meeting with both the Hindu and Muslim sides to the dispute on Sunday night to share information about the survey with them

District Judge A K Vishvesh directed the ASI on Friday to conduct a detailed scientific survey -- including excavations, wherever necessary -- to determine if the mosque in Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh was built at a place where a temple existed earlier

The mosque's "wazookhana" (a small reservoir for Muslim devotees to perform ritual ablutions), where a structure claimed by the Hindu litigants to be a "Shivling" exists, will not be part of the survey, following an earlier Supreme Court order protecting that spot in the complex