A five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear on Thursday the politically sensitive Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid land title dispute in Ayodhya.
The Supreme Court bench will be headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and comprise Justices SA Bobde, NV Ramana, UU Lalit and DY Chandrachud.
A three-judge bench of the Supreme Court had on September 27, 2018, by 2:1 majority, refused to refer to a five-judge Constitution Bench for reconsideration 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.
When the matter was last taken up on January 4, there was no indication that the Ayodhya title dispute would be referred to a Constitution Bench as the Supreme Court had simply said that further orders in the matter would be passed on January 10 by "the appropriate bench, as may be constituted".
The newly set-up five-judge Constitution Bench comprises not only the incumbent chief justice of India but also the four judges who are in line to be chief justice of India in the future. Justice Gogoi's successor as chief justice of India would be Justice Bobde, followed by Justices Ramana, Lalit and Chandrachud.
As many as 14 appeals have been filed in the Supreme Court against the 2010 Allahabad High Court judgement, delivered in four civil suits, that the 2.77-acre disputed land at Ayodhya be partitioned equally among the three parties—the Sunni Waqf Board, the Nirmohi Akhara and Ram Lalla.
The Supreme Court on October 29 last year had fixed for hearing the Ayodhya case in the first week of January before the "appropriate bench".
Later, an application was moved for according an urgent hearing of the Ayodhya case by advancing the date, but the Supreme Court had refused the plea, saying it had already passed an order on October 29 relating to the hearing of 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 the legal heirs of M. Siddiq, one of the original litigants in the case.
Various Hindutva organisations have been demanding an ordinance on early construction of Ram temple at the disputed site.
Recently, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had suggested that any decision on an ordinance on a Ram temple in Ayodhya can happen only after the completion of the judicial process.
Modi's comments had come amid heightened demands by Hindutva organisations, including the RSS, for an ordinance for early construction of a Ram temple in Ayodhya.
"Let the judicial process take its own course. Don't weigh it in political terms. Let the judicial process be over. After the judicial process is over, whatever be our responsibility as a government, we are ready to make all efforts," Modi had said during an interview, broadcast by several TV channels.
