Ayodhya dispute: After 40 day marathon hearing, Supreme Court reserves its Judgment in the case

After 40 days of hearing in the Ayodhya dispute, a Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court today reserved its judgment.

The Bench headed by Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi and comprising Justices SA Bobde, DY Chandrachud, Ashok Bhushan and S Abdul Nazeer has been hearing the case since August 6.

In light of the fact that CJI Gogoi is set to retire in November this year, the Bench had earlier directed the parties to come up with a timeframe within which the arguments would be concluded. The date for the conclusion of arguments was set on October 18 which was agreed upon by the parties. The hearing, however, concluded two days before this deadline.

In order to ensure adherence to the timeframe, the Court had directed the parties to stick to strict timeslots and refrain from repetition of arguments. Even the last day of the hearing set out for rejoinder arguments was required to be apportioned among the parties leading to the timely conclusion of the submissions. The parties have been given three days to file their written submissions.

The hearing in the Ayodhya case began after the mediation panel report suggested that the parties had not arrived at any settlement. The Court had earlier agreed to give mediation a chance and had set up a three-member mediation panel.

During the course of the hearing, the case saw a contempt petition filed by Senior Counsel Rajeev Dhavan against a professor who wrote a letter to Dhavan objecting to his appearance in the matter.  There was also a letter petition filed by RSS ideologue KN Govindacharya seeking live telecast of the case proceedings. While the contempt petition was disposed of after the professor apologised to the Court, the petition for live telecast of the hearing now becomes infructuous.

The judgment in the case is expected to be delivered on or before November 15 this year, the last working day of CJI Ranjan Gogoi who will retire on November 17.

[Read Order]