Ayodhya Verdict: Supreme Court Rejects Plea To Refer The Case To A Larger Bench

The Supreme Court of India in a landmark judgment on Ayodhya verdict, the three-judge bench has ruled that the case will not be referred to a larger bench, and the matter will only be treated as a 'land issue'. The bench declared this with With a 2:1 majority.

The Supreme Court 1994 Ayodhya verdict hearing said that mosques are not necessary for practice of Islam, a ruling the Muslim parties to the Ayodhya title suit said prejudiced their claim.

The verdict was announced by Justice Ashok Bhushan, who was also speaking on behalf of CJI Dipak Misra. While Justice Abdul Nazeer pronounced the dissenting judgment.

Nazeer said that what is essential to religion, as laid down by the 1994 Ismail Faruqui case, was arrived at without comprehensive examination, and that it needs to be re-examined in detail. He further said that the observations had influenced the Allahabad high court in its judgment over the Ayodhya title dispute, which divided the site into three.

"Every judgment must be read as applicable to the particular facts. Court can follow only logical reasoning. One of the main submissions was that the mosque cannot be acquired. The Ismail Farooqi judgment was in a specific context. The statement that mosque is not an essential part of Islam was on the basis that the mosque in question could not be acquired," said Justice Ashok Bhushan.

Justice Dipak Misra and Justice Ashok Bhushan delivered a majority opinion in the Ayodhya verdict that the observations in paragraph 52 of Ismail Faruqi judgment that mosque was not an integral part of Islam have to be understood in the context of land acquisition proceedings.

The SC today said he Ayodhya case which is the Babri Masjid-Ram Janambhoomi title dispute will be heard from October 29.

The Apex Court was giving a verdict on a batch of pleas by Muslim groups who had sought reconsideration of the observations.

Muslim groups had asserted that the "sweeping" observation of the apex court in the verdict should be reconsidered by a five-judge bench as "it had and will have a bearing" on the Babri Masjid-Ram Temple land dispute case.

In February, the supreme court initiated hearing appeals against an Allahabad high court judgment of 2010 that divided the site into three, giving Muslim parties a third of the land on which the mosque had stood.

The Babri mosque had stood on a site since the 16th century, which many Hindus believe is the birthplace of Lord Ram, the Hindu God who end Ravana. In December 1992 thousands of Hindu kar sevaks determined to build a Hindu temple by replacing the mosque, descended upon the mosque destroyed it down. The incident sparked widespread communal violence in India that killed over 2,000 people across the country, and raised concerns over the rule of law, freedom of worship, unity in diversity and the secularism in India.