New Delhi:
The Supreme Court has stayed the Allahabad High Court's verdict on the Ramjanmbhoomi-Babri Masjid title dispute, describing the earlier order as "strange."
Various groups have challenged the High Court's order, delivered in September last year. The Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court accepted that the site was the birthplace of Lord Ram. The three-judge bench ruled in a majority judgment that the disputed land be divided with one-third for the Sunni Waqf Board, one-third for the Nirmohi Akhara and one-third to the party that claims to represent the deity 'Ram Lalla'. (
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The Supreme Court said today, "This is very strange and surprising. Nobody has prayed for partition of the area. The Allahabad High Court has given a new relief which was not sought by anybody."
All major parties in the dispute had challenged the High Court verdict, seeking exclusive rights over the entire land. The nearly sixty-year-old dispute is over whether the 2.7 acres of land on which the Babri Masjid stood before it was demolished on December 6, 1992, belongs to the Sunni Central Waqf Board or to the Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha.
"How can a decree of partition be passed when none of the parties had prayed for it?" the Supreme Court asked today. "It is a difficult situation now, the position is that it (the High Court verdict) has created a litany of litigation."
Although the appeals filed by various Hindu and Muslim religious organizations pertained to only 2.77 acre of disputed land, the Supreme Court also ordered status quo on the 67 acres of land adjacent to the disputed site.
The Supreme Court was hearing a batch of appeals against the High Court order filed by groups like the Nirmohi Akhara, Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha, Jamait Ulama-I-Hind and Sunni Central Wakf Board.
The Wakf Board and Jamait Ulama-I-Hind have petitioned that the High Court's verdict should be over-ruled because it was based on faith and not on evidence.
The different litigants have contended that claims of Muslims, Hindus and the Nirmohi Akhara over the disputed site were mutually exclusive and could not be shared.
No date has been set yet for the court to hear the matter next. The Supreme Court closes for the summer in a week's time. The Supreme Court's order is seen as procedural as the High Court had itself stayed its own order last year - first for three months and it then extended the stay since it was a very sensitive matter.
Ravi Shankar Prasad, a BJP leader who represents one of the Hindu groups, said that he agreed with the Supreme Court. Stressing that he was not speaking as a politician but as a lawyer, Mr Prasad said he agreed with the Supreme Court that partitioning the land was not the solution that the petitioners were looking for. (
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(With PTI inputs)