The five-judge Constitution bench of the Supreme Court, headed by Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi, adjourned the Babri Masjid-Ram Janmabhoomi title dispute till January 29, after Justice UU Lalit, who was part of the bench, withdrew from hearing the matter.
The Chief Justice said that a newly-constituted bench would be formed for hearing the case at the end of the month.
Justice Lalit recused himself after one of the petitioners in the case brought up the fact that in 1994, UU Lalit was the lawyer for Kalyan Singh in a case related to contempt of court. Kalyan Singh was the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh when the Babri Masjid was controversially demolished in 1992.
The Ayodhya case in the Supreme Court began on an extremely dramatic note with Justice UU Lalit, who was part of the five-member Constitution bench, recusing himself from hearing the matter.
Rajeev Dhawan, who brought up the matter of UU Lalit being a lawyer from Kalyan Singh, said that he had no objection to the judge hearing the Ayodhya case.
"I am bringing it to Your Lordships notice though we don't have the objection to him hearing the matter. It is entirely up to Your Lordships," Dhawan told the Supreme Court. Following this, the five judges on the Constitution bench — included CJI Ranjan Gogoi and Justices Justices SA Bobde, NV Ramana, UU Lalit and DY Chandrachud — held an internal discussion.
On coming out of the discussion, CJI Gogoi said that Justice Lalit had expressed a desire to recuse from hearing the matter, as it would not seem appropriate for him to continue on the bench even though the although the merits of the Ayodhya case are unrelated to the contempt case in question. CJI Ranjan Gogoi said that the bench would be reconstituted to fill Justice UU Lalit's now vacant seat.
Some of the advocates in the case told the Supreme Court that there was a dispute over the correctness of the translations of some case-related documents that are in Persian, Sanskrit and Arabic. The Supreme Court then directed its registry to physically inspect the records and asses how long it might take to get them ready for being presented in court.
The registry has been asked to submit a report on the matter on January 29, when a reconstituted five-judge Constitution bench will take up the Ayodhya case again. On January 29, the Supreme Court will also likely do what it was supposed to do today — set a timeline for hearing the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid title dispute case.
