Apex court shouldn’t drag the Ayodhya dispute
It is unfortunate that the Supreme Court has put the Ayodhya temple-mosque dispute on the back burner. The confrontation has been simmering and at times exploding in unwanted ways for decades, and all hopes rested on the apex court to resolve it. But on Friday, the court refused to give an early hearing to the case, claiming that it did not have a ‘slot' for such a hearing. It dismissed BJP leader Subramanian Swamy's plea on the ground that he was not an interested party to the case. That the court does not believe Swamy has a locus standi in the case in which the Babri Masjid Action Committee, Ram lalla and Nirmohi Amhara are the litigants, is one matter. But at least the Bench headed by Chief Justice of India JS Khehar should have on its own decided on an early hearing — and that too at a stretch — to settle the title dispute.
After all, only days ago, the Chief Justice of India had set up various Benches to hear certain cases during the court's summer vacation period. It need not have done the same for the Ayodhya matter, but at least it ought to have given an early date and indicated its resolve to get the work done in a time-bound frame. Admittedly, the matter before the judges is a complex one involving faith, history and archaeology. But how long can the court attempt to not take the bull by the hornsIJ Only days ago, the Chief Justice of India had raised hopes of an early settlement when he asked Swamy to speak to the stakeholders for an out-of-court settlement. The Chief Justice had even offered to mediate and recuse himself from the case until a reasonable period of time to bring the issue to a close. But now it appears the court has gone back on its promise. Regardless of the BJP's leader’s legal standing on the issue, the apex court could still have summoned the parties involved and placed his earlier suggestion of mediation and judged their response.
The bare truth, however, is that a negotiated settlement looks to be an impossibility, given the rigid positions of the legal stakeholders in the case. Many attempts had been made in the past, and especially during Chandrashekhar's prime ministerial tenure, but they came to naught. This was primarily because the pro-mosque lobby's obstinacy. Even now, soon after the Chief Justice of India had offered to mediate in a out-of-court settlement, the first voices of protest had come from this group. The pro-mosque camp has throughout the dispute kept shifting its position, ably assisted by leftist historians and other such assorted people. They had first claimed that the Babri mosque had been constructed on vacant land; when remains of an earlier structure came to light, they said those may have been a Buddhist or a Jain structure; and when it became increasingly clear that the findings indicated the presence of a temple, they accused the Archaeology Survey of India of planting evidence! One now hopes the Supreme Court will revise its present stand and expedite a resolution.