When the matter last came up for hearing on October 29, the Uttar Pradesh government counsel had made an oral request to the court to take it up urgently.Appeals challenging the 2010 Allahabad High Court verdict in the Ramjanmabhoomi-Babri Masjid title suit will come up before the Supreme Court Friday when it is likely to fix a date for hearing the matter. Appeals and related applications have been listed before the bench of Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi and Justice S K Kaul.
When the matter last came up for hearing on October 29, the Uttar Pradesh government counsel had made an oral request to the court to take it up urgently. But the bench of CJI Gogoi and Justices Kaul and K M Joseph did not grant the request and ordered that the appeals be listed in the first week of January before an “appropriate bench” which it said would decide the date of hearing.
The hearing assumes significance because there has been a clamour from Hindu outfits for an early decision. They have also been seeking an ordinance for construction of a Ram temple at the disputed site in Ayodhya.
Two days ago, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, responding to a question on bringing an ordinance, said “the matter is before the judiciary, let it be completed” and “once it comes from the judiciary, wherever the responsibility of a government begins, we are ready to make all efforts”.
In an interview to news agency ANI, the Prime Minister suggested that the judicial process was being slowed down by Congress lawyers who were creating “obstructions” in the Supreme Court.
Hearing on the appeals, which were filed in 2010 after the Allahabad High Court order, were delayed for various reasons. Though it came up for consideration in 2017, headway could not be made as the documents had not been fully translated, and later one of the parties questioned the 1994 findings of a Constitution Bench in the Dr M Ismail Faruqui etc vs Union Of India and Others case.
What was challenged was a statement in the Faruqui judgement that a mosque was not an “essential part of the practice of the religion of Islam” and hence “its acquisition (by the state) is not prohibited by provisions in the Constitution of India”. The petitioner contended that earlier decisions in the Ayodhya case were influenced by this statement.
The Faruqui verdict had come on a plea challenging the constitutional validity of the Acquisition of Certain Area at Ayodhya Act,1993, under which 67.7 acres were acquired in the Ramjanambhoomi-Babri Masjid complex.
But in September last year, the Supreme Court, in a 2-1 verdict, rejected this, saying “we again make it clear that questionable observations made in Ismail Faruqui’s case. were made in context of land acquisition” and that “those observations were neither relevant for deciding the suits nor relevant for deciding these appeals”. The judges said that “the observation need not be read broadly to hold that a mosque can never be an essential part of the practice of the religion of Islam”.
Dismissal of the plea to refer the matter to a larger bench cleared the way for the beginning of the final hearing of the appeals.
In 2010, the Allahabad High Court ordered a three-way division of the disputed 2.77 acres of the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid site, giving a third each to the Nirmohi Akhara sect, the Sunni Central Wakf Board, UP, and Ramlalla Virajman.
