The Hindu : Ayodhya and the courts

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Sunday, Mar 02, 2003

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Ayodhya and the courts

The Supreme Court had in an interim judgement banned any kind of activity on any part of the 67 acres acquired in Ayodhya. The Centre's plea now is for vacation of this stay. J. Venkatesan reports.

FOR 53 years, the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid dispute has defied a resolution. And tragically, even while the matter was in court — in complete defiance of the Supreme Court's orders that status quo must be maintained in the disputed complex — just over 10 years ago on December 6, 1992, a few hundred self-styled `Ram bhakts' and `kar sevaks' razed to the ground the structure built by Mir Baqi in 1528 AD.

The demolition of the structure took place when `sadhus' and `sants' under the control of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad organised `kar seva' at the complex and gathered a crowd of several thousand people. The BJP leaders, L. K. Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi, travelled from Varanasi and Mathura exhorting people to join the `kar seva' in large numbers.

It was after the demolition that the Narasimha Rao Government acquired some 67 acres in and around the disputed area in 1993 while ordering that all pending suits and legal proceedings related to the Ayodhya dispute shall abate.

This was bound to be challenged and so it was. And in 1994, a five-judge bench gave a historical ruling with the majority judgment of three being delivered by the then Chief Justice of India, M.N. Venkatachalaiah, Justice J.S. Verma and Justice G.N. Ray.

In a nutshell, the judges struck down the particular section of the Government enactment ordering the abatement of all pending suits and legal proceedings related to the Ayodhya dispute while upholding the validity of the acquisition of the 67 acres in Ayodhya.

The Government ordinance abating all pending suits, they said, was "unconstitutional and invalid" as it had been done "without providing for alternative dispute resolution mechanism" and amounted to "negation of the rule of law" and "extinction of the judicial remedy". Strong words indeed, signalling clearly that the Court will not countenance denial of judicial remedy to any aggrieved party.

The effect of this judgment of 1994 was the revival of the title suits before the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court (its outcome will finally decide the ownership of the disputed land on which the Babri Masjid stood and where the Ram idol was placed in December 1949 leading to the dispute) and other related cases.

But it is the other part of the 1994 judgment which also upheld the acquisition by the Central Government of all of the 67 acres in Ayodhya that has now become the centrepiece of a heated political debate. Justice Verma has himself recently indicated that had the 1994 judgment allowed the Government to give back part of the acquired land before the final settlement of the Ayodhya dispute the Court would not have upheld the acquisition.

But questions are being asked by political parties, and the VHP has virtually demanded that it be given a lion's share of the 67 acres. Did the 1994 Supreme Court judgment bar the Government from re-distributing the acquired land till the final disposal of the Ayodhya case in the courts? Till when should the Government hold it and under what circumstances should it give back some of the "surplus" to those who owned the land till the 1993 acquisition? (And it seems that the VHP became the "owner" of some 42 acres before the acquisition only because the Uttar Pradesh Government had earlier acquired this land from other Hindus and handed it over to the VHP-controlled Nyas). And finally, should a large chunk of this land be handed over to the Nyas which has announced a plan to immediately start construction of a Ram temple?

Justice Verma has stated recently that the judgment was unambiguous, that no part of the land can be handed over by the Government to anyone before final settlement of the dispute.

Last year, when the VHP announced a `shila poojan' ceremony to be held on the acquired land, the Supreme Court in an interim judgment banned any kind of activity on any part of the 67 acres.

The Centre's recent plea before the Court is for vacation of that stay against the background of the VHP's loud demands that a large part of that acquired land be handed over to the Nyas so that it can immediately start building the Ram temple. And this demand is being made even as the main title suit in the High Court is progressing rapidly. Clearly, the feeling is that the Centre somehow wants to upstage a final judicial verdict even while paying lip service to "abiding by a decision of the Court", and that it wants to "appease" the VHP and its RSS bosses.

Another writ petition before the Supreme Court is that of Mohammad Aslam Bhure and other parties who want the entire 67 acres to be brought under the protection of the Army till a court decision on the main title suit.

Will the apex court vacate the stay on various activities on the acquired land as asked by the Centre? And if it does will it allow the Centre to part with that land and hand it over to the Nyas? Or will it saythe land should not be touched till the final settlement and adjudication of the title suits in the case?

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