SC throws out all interveners
The Supreme Court on Wednesday started the crucial hearing in the Ayodhya dispute as a "pure land dispute," throwing out all 32 intervention applications by a single order and ordering the Registry not to entertain any new applications in the case.
The intervention applications thrown out included one filed by BJP MP Subramanian Swamy last August to assert the Hindus'' fundamental right to religion guaranteed under Article 25 of the Constitution.
When the Special Bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices Ashok Bhushan and S Abdul Nazeer told him that he is not a party to the core issue of property dispute before it, Dr Swamy insisted that his fundamental rights are higher than the property rights.
The Court, however, refused to oblige him or anybody else to expand the scope of the case before it and ordered his application right to worship converted into a writ petition to be heard by an appropriate Bench.
The Bench also rejected applications filed by renowned personalities, including Shyam Benegal, Anil Dharkar and Teesta Setalvad, urging to put the 2.77 acre of the disputed land at Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh to "secular use" rather than religious that may continue to create communal tension.
Dismissal of all interventions came on a plea by the Muslim side that it should listen to only the main parties related to the issue.
The Bench made quite clear that the case before it is limited to hearing 13 appeals filed against the judgment of the Allahabad High Court, ruling a three-way split of the disputed 2.77 acres in Ayodhya among the Sunni Waqf Board, a Hindu organisation called the Nirmohi Akhara and Ram Lalla or Infant Rama, which is represented by the Hindu Mahasabha for the construction of the Ram temple.
The special bench was to start the crucial hearing on February 8, but it had to defer it to March 14 stating that "once we start hearing the case, it will go on" because some documents and translations were not filed by that time as ordered on December 5, 2017. On December 6, 1992, the Babri Mosque standing on the disputed land was demolished by lakhs of kar sevaks who had gathered at the site from across the country at the instance of the RSS outfit Vishwa Hindu Parishad and BJP then led by its patriarch Lal Krishna Advani, who had even gone on a Padyatra (roadshow) in 1990 in support of the Ram Temple at the site. The incident had triggered communal riots across the country. The kar sevaks had claimed that the land on which the mosque stood was the birthplace of Ram. In May 2017, a special Central Bureau of Investigation court granted bail to Advani and other BJP leaders like Murli Manohar Joshi and Uma Bharti accused in the mosque demolition case. Meanwhile, even as the Supreme Court hearing goes on, spiritual guru Sri Sri Ravi Shankar is mediating for talks between both the sides for an out of court settlement.