No deferring September 24 judgment day on Ayodhya, court says

The decks have finally been cleared for the Allahabad high court (HC) to end the six-decade-long legal stalemate over the ownership of the disputed Babri Masjid in Ayodhya. It is now certain that on September 24 the court will tell the world whether the site belongs to a temple or a mosque.

A special three-judge bench of the HC at Lucknow on Friday rejected an application asking for deferring the judgment and trying to settle the matter through mediation.

“The application is rejected with heavy cost,” ruled the bench of justices Dharam Veer Sharma, Sudhir Agarwal and SU Khan. The judges dismissed the application within minutes of the hearing. They also made their annoyance evident, virtually accusing the petitioner, Ramesh Chandra Tripathi, of wasting the court’s time with a matter which had “no merit”.

One of the judges suggested a penalty of Rs5 lakh on the petitioner while another was of the view that the amount should be Rs10 lakh. Zafaryab Jilani, counsel for the Sunni Central Waqf Board, later told reporters that the amount would be known only after the court releases a signed order.

Tripathi, one of the respondents in a title suit, had filed an application before the court last Monday seeking deferment of the judgment in the case in view of the prevailing tension. Contending that communal violence could break out after the verdict is pronounced, he had asked the court to give more time for resolving the matter through negotiation. But the court took an oblique view of the matter when the matter came up for hearing on Friday.     
 
Tripathi’s counsel Prashant Chandra was at a complete loss for words as the court asked one question after another as to what efforts the petitioner had made for reconciliation, who were the people he had contacted to mobilise opinion for mediation, whether he had a clear idea of how an amicable solution could be reached at this stage and so on.

What added to the woes of the petitioner’s counsel was open opposition to the idea of mediation by all other parties involved. Counsel for Hindu Maha Sabha (HMS) Hari Shanker Jain, as well as Jilani, told the court that there was no merit in the application and it was thus not maintainable.

“Mr Tripathi has filed this application in mala fide manner only to delay the judgment… No compromise is possible now,” said Jilani.

“If courts stop pronouncing judgments only on apprehension of violence, there would be complete breakdown of our judicial system… This is a bogus application,” said Jain, concurring.
Tripathi’s counsel, however, said his petitioner could consider appealing against the order before the Supreme Court. But legal experts said the rejection of such an application cannot be challenged in the Supreme Court.