SC to fix schedule of hearing of Ayodhya land dispute cases in January next year

Satya Prakash 
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, October 29

A three-judge Bench led by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi on Monday ordered the Ayodhya land dispute case to be listed before an appropriate Bench in the first week of January for fixing the date of hearing.

The CJI said the case could be heard in January, February, March or April.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, who is representing the UP Government, demanded that the case be taken up immediately after reopening of the court post-Diwali vacation. Senior counsel CS Vaidyanathan, representing Ram Lalla, too, demanded that the case be taken up in November itself.

Mehta told the court that the case was otherwise also a 100-year-old dispute, which should be taken up on a priority basis.

Now, a new Bench will be constituted to hear and decide cross-appeals against the September 30, 2010 order of the Allahabad High Court dividing the land equally between Ram Lalla, Nirmohi Akhada and Sunni Wakf Board and it appears highly unlikely that the Ayodhya land dispute verdict will be delivered before the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

On September 27, the apex court had declined to refer to a five-judge Constitution Bench the issue of reconsideration of the observations in its 1994 judgment that a mosque was not integral to Islam, which had arisen during the hearing of the Ayodhya land dispute.

In a majority verdict of 2:1, a three-judge Bench headed by then Chief Justice Dipak Misra had said the civil suit had to be decided on the basis of evidence and the previous verdict had no relevance to this issue.

Justice Ashok Bhushan, who had penned the judgment for himself and the Chief Justice, had said it had to find out the context in which the five-judge Bench had delivered the 1994 verdict.

However, Justice S Abdul Nazeer had disagreed with the two judges and had said whether a mosque is integral to Islam had to be decided considering religious belief which requires a detailed consideration.

The court had on September 27 said the civil suit on land dispute would be heard by a three-judge Bench on October 29.

The issue whether a mosque is integral to Islam had cropped up when the three-judge Bench was hearing the appeals filed against the Allahabad High Court's verdict.

The three-judge high court Bench, in a 2:1 majority ruling, had ordered that the 2.77 acre of land be partitioned equally among three parties- the Sunni Waqf Board, the Nirmohi Akhara and Ram Lalla. With PTI