The Supreme Court closed the doors for any further review on the land of Ayodhya dispute case. A five judges bench rejected petition seeking review of the November 9th Ayodhya land dispute verdict which cleared the construction of a Ram Temple. The Supreme Court on 9th November declared the way for the construction of a Ram Temple and also directed the centre to allocate 5 acre plot to the building of a mosque to the Sunni Waqf Board. This is a one of the most important and most anticipated judgment in Indian history, a bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi put an end to the dispute which is pending form decades. In a 1024 page verdict the Supreme Court said that the mosque should be constructed at a “prominent site” and a trust should be formed within three months for the construction of the temple at the site many Hindus believe that the Lord Ram was born.
One of the longest running battle in India’s legal history has just concluded now. The first case of Ayodhya dispute was filed 134 years ago. Over the decades its way has wounded up by the legal hierarchy starting from Faizabad Civil Court to the Supreme Court. Ayodhya is a city in Uttar Pradesh is a fascinating one. As per the ancient history, Ayodhya was one of the holiest city where the religious faiths of Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and Jainism united together. Also Hindu believes that Ayodhya is a birthplace of their most revered deities Lord Ram.Before independence the first recorded legal history of Ayodhya dispute dates back to 1858. An FIR was lodged on 30th November, 1858 by Mohd Salim against a group of Nihang Sikhs who had made their nishan and written “Ram” inside the Babri mosque. They had also performed havan and puja. Sheetal Dubey, the thanedar of Avad, in his report on 1st December 1858 verified the complaint and even said that a chabutra has been constructed by the Sikhs. So this became the first documentary evidence that the Hindu were not only present in the outer courtyard but also inside the inner courtyard. On 16thJanuary 1950, Gopal Singh Visharad of the Hindu Maha Sabha became the first person who had filed a suit in independent India. Gopal Visharad filed a suit against five Muslims state government and the district magistrate of Faizabad praying for conduct pooja and right to pray in the inner courtyard. On that same day, the civil judge passed an order of injunction and allowed the puja. At the centre of the row is a 16th Century mosque that was demolished in 1992 by Hindu mobs and sparking riots that killed about 2,000 people. Many Hindus believe that the Babri Masjid was constructed only of ruins a Hindu temple that was demolished by Muslim aggressors. Muslims say they allowed prayers at the mosque until December 1949 when some Hindus placed an idol of Ram in the mosque and started to worship the idols. 700 Muslims were killed in Mumbai riots. This case had three main competing parties – Two Hindu groups and the Muslim Waqf Board which is responsible for the maintenance of Islamic properties in India. In this dispute the litigants are the Hindu Mahasabha, a right wing political party and the Nirmohi Akhara which is a sect of Hindu monks. In this case a verdict in September 2010 determined that the 2.77 acres of the disputed land would be divided equally into three parts. The court lined that the site should be divide with the Muslim community getting control of a third, the Hindus another third and the remainder to the Nirmohi Akhara sect. It affirmed that the disputed spot was the birthplace of Lord Ram and the Babri Masjid was built after the demolition of a Hindu temple and that it was not in accordance with the tenets of Islam. The Supreme Court suspended this decision in 2011 after both Muslim and Hindu groups appealed against it. The 9th November 2019 the Archaeological Survey of India cited a report as evidence that the remains of a building that was not Islamic were beneath the structure of the demolished Babri Masjid.