The report will be opened on August 2 and on the basis of it, the court will determine whether to hear the case on a day-to-day basis.
The Supreme Court on Thursday directed that mediation in the Ramjanmabhoomi-Babri Masjid title suit dispute case be concluded by July 31 and appeals be listed on August 2, so the court can draw up a schedule for hearing the case.
The bench of five Supreme Court judges headed by Chief Justice of India (CJI) Ranjan Gogoi asked the Mediation Committee headed by former SC judge FM Ibrahim Kalifulla to submit its final report to court by August 1.
The report will be opened on August 2 and on the basis of it, the court will determine whether to hear the case on a day-to-day basis.
Disclosing its plan of action, the bench of CJI and Justices SA Bobde, DY Chandrachud, Ashok Bhushan and S Abdul Nazeer said, "Taking into account what has been brought to our notice by the said report (of Mediation Committee), we fix the hearing of the cases on and from August 2, 2019. The bench will assemble again on the date at 2 pm."
On March 8, the court had directed the parties to the suit to try and resolve the contentious issue by way of an out-of-court mediation. For this purpose, the court formed a panel of Justice Kalifulla, spiritual guru Sri Sri Ravi Shankar and senior advocate and mediation expert Sriram Panchu.
In A Fortnight
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| Mediators, still trying to tie loose ends, have been asked to submit their report by August 1 |
| The SC bench headed by CJI Gogoi will meet on August 2 to draw up a schedule for hearing the case |
The court had allowed the committee time till August 15 to complete mediation. In early July, Gopal Singh Visharad, the person who filed the original suit in 1950, requested the court to take up hearing as mediation had failed.
On July 11, the court sought a report from the Committee. The judges were clear that if mediation failed, the hearing should commence by July 25.
But the latest report of the Committee has indicated that mediators are still trying to tie loose ends.
If the hearing is to start, it will be one of the biggest cases to be heard by the top court, not only becasue religious sentiments of Hindus and Muslims are attached to it but also becasue of the sheer size of the land.
The Allahabad High Court judgment of September 30, 2010 had ruled the disputed site of 22.7 acres to be divided equally between the Hindu deity Lord Ram, the Muslim Sunni Central Waqf Board, and the Nirmohi Akhara.
Case records are kept in 15 trunks containing depositions by witnesses and evidence running into more than 70,000 pages in Persian, Sanskrit, Arabic, Gurumukhi, Urdu and Hindi.
These documents have been translated by the official translators of the Supreme Court and experts drawn from various government departments.
The HC judgment itself runs into 8,170 pages, making it one of the oldest and biggest cases to be decided in the recent past.
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