Ayodhya Dispute: Supreme Court has 6 working days to meet the Oct 18 deadline

The Supreme Court has been hearing the Ayodhya title suit for two months and with the arguments still underway, doubts are being raised over their smooth completion of submissions by the deadline set for October 18.

With the court going into Dussehra vacation from September 7th to 12th, and taking into account the adjoining weekends, the five-judge bench is left with six working days, including today's proceedings, to hear the rest of the submissions.

To meet the deadline, the bench has been sitting for an additional hour four days a week and has hinted to sitting on Saturdays as well, which will give it one more day. The bench does not have the luxury of time to prepare judgments.

It had earlier indicated that even if the arguments complete by October 18, to get a judgment out in a month would be "miraculous". The bench headed by Chief Justice of India (CJI) Ranjan Gogoi has to deliver the judgment by November 17, the day the CJI retires.

This concern crept into the bench's tone this week as it insisted that lawyers on both sides restrict their arguments to written submissions rather than consuming time by presenting them orally.

SC has been pinning down lawyers to argue by the clock and stops them when their allotted time is up: "If you need a judgment in the case then we are sorry." As a result, the Hindu side got two-and-a-half days while Akhara got 2.5 hours for their replies. The appeals in the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid disputed site case arise out of four suits: Two by the Hindu side, one by Sunni Central Waqf Board and another by the Nirmohi Akhara (of 1959).

As per the court's rough schedule, arguments by the Hindu side and Nirmohi Akhara are over. The Muslim parties' response to the suits filed by them is also done. On Thursday, the Hindu side completed its counter-response and now the arena is open for the Muslim side to open arguments of their suit.

This is expected to begin on Thursday and continue over three days.

The court will be closed for Dussehra vacations for the whole week causing arguments to spill over to the week commencing October 14. The Hindu party and Nirmohi Akhara will need a day or two to reply to the Muslim side, following which the Court will hear each side on moulding the final relief. This would keep the process on track to meet the October 18 deadline.

On August 6, 2019 a five-judge bench took up day-to-day hearing of the case after the Registry of the Supreme Court prepared all the documents, translated copies of evidences from other languages into English, and prepared sufficient sets of each file, documents for Justices SA Bobde, DY Chandrachud, Ashok Bhushan, S Abdul Nazeer and the CJI.