AYODHYA: A MEDIATION TIMELINE

2000-2003 Ex-PM A.B. Vajpayee opens an Ayodhya cell in PMO. Senior IPS officer Kunal Kishore plays go-between for VHP and All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB). Efforts fizzle out. In 2003, new Kanchi shankaracharya Jayendra Saraswati visits Lucknow’s Darul Uloom Nadwatul Ulama to meet the AIMPLB but soon withdraws from negotiations August 2010 The Allahabad HC asks lawyers from both sides to explore the option of mediation; plea rejected 1990 Ex-PM V.P. Singh tries for an out-of-court settlement, but his government falls and negotiations are abandoned

1991 Ex-PM Chandra Shekhar forms a committee with the help of godman Chandraswami and then Union home minister Subodh Kant Sahay. Sharad Pawar, Mulayam Singh Yadav and the late Bhairon Singh Shekhawat are also roped in to talk to all sides, but neither the Shekhar government nor the mediation effort lasts long. Nov. 2017

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, now part of the latest mediation team, makes his first attempt, but Ram Janmabhoomi Nyas, AIMPLB and other groups reject it.

March 21, 2017 Ex-CJI J.S. Khehar allows BJP leader Subramanian Swamy’s plea for early hearing on title suits. But he asks appellants “to first try to sit with each other and resolve it... if you want some principal mediator, we can arrange it”. 1992

Kanchi shankaracharya Chandrashekarendra Saraswati and then (AIMPLB) chief Maulana Abdul Hasan Ali Hasani Nadwi are brought in to mediate by ex-PM P.V. Narasimha Rao, but it doesn’t take off. The shankaracharya withdraws, citing political pressure. Rao tries again with the help of the Puri and Dwarka seers, even ropes in Chandraswami, but to no avail.

Mediation efforts were on even before the Babri Masjid was razed on Dec. 6, 1992