SC To Hear Ayodhya-Babri Masjid Land Dispute Case On Feb 26

The Supreme Court constitution bench will hear the Ayodhya-Babri land dispute case on February 26.

The Constitution Bench comprising Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi, Justices Bobde, Chandrachud, Ashok Bhushan and Abdul Nazeer will assemble at 10.30 AM on that day.

Earlier, Justice Lalit had recused from hearing the matter, after one of the parties informed the court that he had appeared in a contempt petition in relation to Babri dispute when he was a lawyer.

On September 27, a three judges bench of the then CJI Dipak Misra, Justice Ashok Bhushan and Justice Abdul Nazeer had decided by 2:1 majority that there was no need to refer the matter to larger bench. The request for reference was made by Senior Advocate Dhavan appearing for Sunni Waqf Board on the premise that the observation in the Constitution Bench judgment in Ismail Faruqui case that "offering namaz in mosque is not an essential feature of Islam" required reconsideration.

The majority of the then CJI Misra and Justice Bhushan opined that the said observation in Faruqui was not relevant in determining the title dispute of Ayodhya-Babri Masjid land. The majority held that the observations in Faruqui were made in the context of deciding the issue whether a mosque could claim immunity from land acquisition proceedings.

However, dissenting from this view, Justice Abdul Nazeer held that the observations in Faruqui case influenced the High Court decision in the title suit, and hence required reconsideration by a larger bench. After declining the plea for reference to larger bench, the majority had fixed the next date of hearing as October 29. On October 29, the SC had said that the matter will be listed in the first week of January for fixing the date of hearing.

On January 4, the bench of CJI Gogoi and Justice S K Kaul decided to post the matter on January 10 'before appropriate bench' to fix the hearing date.

In December 2017, a plea for postponing the hearing after 2019 Lok Sabha polls was made by Senior Advocates Kapil Sibal, Rajeev Dhavan and Dushyant Dave, on the ground that the political climate was not conducive for hearing the dispute. However, the bench of the then CJI Misra turned down the plea, after a dramatic hearing session.

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