Ayodhya: The Supreme Court on Friday said that an appropriate bench constituted by it will pass an order on January 10 for fixing the date of hearing in the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid land dispute title case at Ayodhya.
“Further orders will be passed by an appropriate bench on January 10 for fixing the date of hearing the matter,” a bench comprising Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice S K Kaul said.
No sooner the matter came up, the CJI said it is the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid case and went ahead with passing the order.
Senior advocates Harish Salve and Rajeev DhaVan, appearing for different parties, did not even get the opportunity to make any submission. The hearing did not even last 30 seconds.
The matter was listed before a bench comprising Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice S K Kaul and was scheduled to take up a batch of petitions for hearing.
The apex court is likely to constitute a three-judge bench for hearing as many as 14 appeals filed against the 2010 Allahabad High Court judgement, delivered in four civil suits, that the 2.77-acre land be partitioned equally among the three parties — the Sunni Waqf Board, the Nirmohi Akhara and Ram Lalla.
The court on October 29 had fixed the matter in the first week of January before an “appropriate bench”, which will decide the schedule of hearing.
Later, an application was moved for according an urgent hearing by advancing the date, but the top court had refused the plea, saying it had already passed an order on October 29 relating to the hearing on the matter.
The plea for early hearing was moved by the Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha (ABHM) which is one of the respondents in the appeal filed by legal heirs of M Siddiq, one of the original litigants in the case.
A three-judge bench of the top court had on September 27, by 2:1 majority, refused to refer to a five-judge constitution bench the issue of reconsideration of the observations in its 1994 judgement that a mosque was not integral to Islam. The matter had arisen during the hearing of the Ayodhya land dispute. Various Hindutava organisations have been demanding an ordinance on early construction of Ram temple at the disputed site.
The Babri mosque which stood at the site was demolished in 1992.
Bureau Report
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