Ayodhya review petitions dismissed: The Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed all 18 petitions seeking review of the November 9 verdict over the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid dispute in Ayodhya. In a departure from the normal procedure, the petitions were heard in-camera by five-judge bench headed by Chief Justice SA Bobde and comprising Justices D Y Chandrachud, Ashok Bhushan, S A Nazeer and Sanjeev Khanna. The apex court bench rejected the petitions after finding no merits, news agency PTI reported.
The petitions rejected by the Supreme Court also included those filed by Nirmohi Akhara and All India Muslims Personal Law Board (AIMPLB). Fourty civil rights activists had also filed review petitions in the Supreme Court despite them not being parties in the original case.
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A five-judge bench headed by the then CJI Ranjan Gogoi, on November 9, delivered a unanimous judgment giving the disputed 2.77 acres of Ayodhya land to Ram Lalla and also directed the Centre to identify and provide 5 acres of land to the Sunni Waqf Board for the construction of a mosque elsewhere in the Uttar Pradesh town.
The Nirmohi Akhara, in its petition, sought clarification over its role. The Supreme Court had in its verdict directed the Centre to provide “adequate representation” to the Akhara, one of the original petitioners in the decades-old case, in trust which will be established to look after the construction of Ram Temple in Ayodhya.
One of the pleas filed by 40 persons, including historian Irfan Habib, economist and political commentator Prabhat Patnaik, activists Harsh Mander, Nandini Sundar and John Dayal, argued that the Supreme Court’s decision “errs in both fact and law”.