Ayodhya case: Centre moves Supreme Court seeking nod to return non-disputed land to original owners

The Central Government headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has moved the Supreme Court seeking its permission to return to original owners 67 acres acquired land around disputed Ramjanmabhoomi Babri Masjid site in Ayodhya.

In a fresh plea, the Centre said it had acquired 67 acres of land around the 2.77 acre disputed Ram Janambhoomi-Babri Masjid site. The plea has said that the Ram Janambhoomi Nyas (a trust to promote construction of Ram Temple) had sought return of excess land acquired in 1991 to original owners.

Earlier, the apex court had ordered that the status quo be maintained with regard to the acquired 67 acre of land around the disputed site.

The central government in 1991 had acquired 67 acres land around the disputed site.

Fourteen appeals have been filed in the apex court against the 2010 Allahabad High Court judgement, 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.

The Supreme Court had on Sunday cancelled the hearing scheduled for Tuesday in the title dispute case due to non-availability of Justice S A Bobde, one of the five judges of the Constitution bench.

The sitting of the Constitution bench, headed by Chief Justice of India (CJI) Ranjan Gogoi stands cancelled as Justice S A Bobde will not be available on January 29, as per a notice issued by the Supreme Court registry.

The five-judge bench was re-constituted on January 25 as Justice U U Lalit, who was a member of the original bench, had recused himself from hearing the matter.

When the new bench was constituted, Justice N V Ramana was also excluded from the re-constitution bench.

No reason was cited for the exclusion of Justice Ramana in the new Constitution bench.

Besides the CJI, the new bench comprises justices S A Bobde, D Y Chandrachud, Ashok Bhushan and SA Nazeer.

In the fresh bench, justices Bhushan and Nazeer made a come back to hear the matter.

On January 10, Justice Lalit had recused himself after expressing disinclination to participate in the hearing any further as he had appeared as a lawyer for former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Kalyan Singh in a related matter "sometime in the year 1997".

On January 10, the bench in its order had noted that the apex court registry's secretary general has informed the CJI that in four suits, out of which these appeals have arisen, in all 120 issues have been framed for trial and a total of 88 witnesses were examined.

It had noted that depositions of witnesses run into 13,886 pages and a total of 257 documents exhibited. 

(With PTI inputs)