The Supreme Court will not hear the Ayodhya case on January 29, as scheduled. Justice SA Bobde of the five-member Constitution Bench is reportedly not available on Tuesday. A new date for the hearing has not yet been announced.
This comes soon after Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Adityanath claimed that his government will resolve the land dispute case in a day if the Supreme Court is unable to deliver a judgement soon.
The Supreme Court had on Friday reconstituted a bench that was supposed to hear the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid land dispute on January 29. An earlier hearing on January 10 was adjourned after Justice UU Lalit recused himself from the matter.
Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi had said the new bench would comprise Justices Ashok Bhushan, Abdul Nazeer, SA Bobde, DY Chandrachud and himself. The earlier five-judge Constitution bench had included Gogoi, Bobde, Chandrachud, NV Ramana and UU Lalit.
The Supreme Court had in October rejected the Uttar Pradesh government’s appeal for an early hearing in the case. As many as 14 separate petitions have been filed against the 2010 Allahabad High Court verdict ordering a three-way division of the land on which the Babri Masjid stood. The land was divided equally between the Nirmohi Akhara, the Sunni Wakf Board and the representative for the deity Ram Lalla in the 2010 judgement.
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