NEW DELHI, Aug 11:
The Supreme Court will commence the final hearing in the long-standing Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid title dispute from December 5, a day before the 25th anniversary of the demolition of the medieval-era structure.
The apex court, after an intense deliberation for more than one-and-half-hours, reached a consensus on commencement of the hearing on a total of 13 appeals filed against the 2010 judgement of the Allahabad High Court in four civil suits.
The high court had ruled a three-way division of the disputed 2.77 acre area at Ayodhya among the parties — the Sunni Waqf Board, the Nirmohi Akhara and the Lord Ram Lalla.
Another sect of the Muslims under the banner of Shia Central Waqf Board of Uttar Pradesh recently went to the court offering a solution that a mosque could be built in a Muslim- dominated area at a “reasonable distance” from the disputed site in Ayodhya.
However, its intervention has been opposed by the All India Sunni Waqf Board which claimed that judicial adjudication between the two sects had already been done in 1946 by declaring the mosque, which was demolished on December 6, 1992, as that belonging to the Sunnis.
A specially constituted bench, headed by Justice Dipak Misra, asked the contesting parties to complete the translation of the exhibits of the documents likely to be relied upon into English within 12 weeks since these were in eight different languages including Hindi, Sanskrit, Urdu, Persian, Pali and Arabic.
The bench, also comprising justices Ashok Bhushan and Abdul Nazeer, asked the Uttar Pradesh government to complete within 10 weeks the translation of the evidence recorded for adjudication of the title dispute in the high court into English.
The bench made it clear that the parties would have to strictly adhere to the time frame fixed by it and that no adjournment would be given under any circumstance.
The top court said it would not allow the matter to take any shape other than the civil appeals and would adopt the same procedure as was done by the high court.
It said it would strictly go by the Civil Procedure Code and the Evidence Act. (PTI)
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