The Supreme Court will not hear the Ayodhya land dispute case on 29 January due to the non-availability of Justice SA Bobde, ANI reported. The case was to be heard by a 5-judge Constitution Bench headed by CJI Rajnan Gogoi, and Justices SA Bobde, DY Chandrachud, Ashok Bhushan and Abdul Nazeer.
Justices Bhushan and Nazeer who were part of an earlier 3-judge bench in the politically sensitive Ram Janambhoomi-Babri Masjid title dispute case, were included in the newly constituted 5-judge bench in the case on Friday, 25 January, PTI reported.
Both the judges were part of the 3-judge bench, then headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra (now retired), which had by 2:1 majority verdict refused to refer to a larger bench the question as to whether mosque is integral to offering prayers in Islam. Justice Nazeer had delivered a minority judgment.
The bench had on 27 September last year refused reconsideration of the observations in its 1994 judgment that a mosque was not integral to Islam. The matter had arisen during the hearing of the Ayodhya land dispute.
A 5-judge Constitution Bench was eventually set up on 8 January this year, but Justices Bhushan and Nazeer were not part of it.
The matter came up for hearing on 10 January. However after Justice UU Lalit’s recusal from hearing the matter, a new five-judge bench has been reconstituted in which both the judges have made a comeback.
Fourteen appeals have been filed in the apex court against the 2010 Allahabad High Court judgment, delivered in four civil suits, that the 2.77-acre land be partitioned equally among three parties – the Sunni Waqf Board, the Nirmohi Akhara and Ram Lalla.
In the last September verdict of 2:1, the then bench headed by Justice Misra (since retired) had said the civil suit has to be decided on the basis of evidence, adding that the previous verdict has no relevance on this issue.
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