Finish Ayodhya case hearing by Oct 18: SC

NEWDELHI:The Supreme Court on Thursday stressed the need for concluding hearings in the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid title suit by October 18, saying “it would be a miracle to write a verdict in the case in four weeks” once both sides are done with arguing their cases.

The court is racing against time because there are only three days of hearing left before the apex court heads for a week’s break on October 5. Other holidays await, including the festival of Diwali.

“We make it very clear that there will be no extra day,” Chief Justice of India (CJI) Ranjan Gogoi, heading a five-judge Constitution bench hearing the matter, said. “It will be miraculous if we can give a judgment (in four weeks of the completion of hearings) considering what the parties had given (to the court by way of arguments),” the CJI said.

SC last week fixed October 18 as the deadline for conclusion of arguments in the case, giving itself exactly a month before Gogoi’s retirement on November 17 to pronounce its judgment on the decades-old land dispute in Uttar Pradesh’s Ayodhya between Hindus and Muslims.

The bench is hearing cross-appeals against the 2010 Allahabad high court verdict dividing the 2.77 acres of land into three equal parts among the Sunni Waqf Board; an organisation claiming to represent Ram Lalla; and the Nirmohi Akhara.

Hindu groups claim that a Ram temple existed at the disputed site in Ayodhya, and that the shrine was demolished during Mughal ruler Babar’s regime in the 16th century and replaced with the Babri mosque. On December 6, 1992, Hindu activists razed the mosque.

Senior advocate Rajeev Dhavan, appearing for the Sunni Wakf Board, apologized to the court for the arguments that were placed before it earlier by his co-counsel Meenakshi Arora, over the authenticity of the Archaeological Survey of

THE BENCH IS HEARING CROSS-APPEALS AGAINST 2010 HC VERDICT DIVIDING THE 2.77 ACRE PLOT AMONG SUNNI WAQF BOARD, RAM LALLA AND NIRMOHI AKHARA

India (ASI) report that said a temple existed at the spot where a Masjid had been built.

The court then allowed the lawyers to mould the arguments in such a way that only contradictions in the report were discussed.

Highlighting the “contradictions”, Arora raised questions on the recovery of a “pranala”, or a discharge outlet attached to the wall of the sanctrum, by the ASI as well as the discovery of a sculpture of a “divine couple”.

She said ASI’s experts had dated some of the recoveries to different periods. She argued that the walls discovered by ASI under the demolished mosque could have been part of an Idgah.

She explained that ASI had also drawn an inference on the temple’s existence. Therefore, a similar inference could be drawn for an Idgah.

Use of lime surki, a construction material used in medieval period, on the wall indicated it was an Islamic structure because such building materials were introduced during the Islamic period.

The pillar bases found by the ASI were in different layers of the soil. This, she said, showed that they were built during different periods. When asked how she reached that conclusion, Arora said she was saying so because they were in different floors.

This prompted justice DY Chandrachud to comment: “The only person who could have explained these is the expert”.