Why it is in news?

• The Supreme Court conveyed its clinical approach to the 70-year-old Ramjanmabhoomi-Babri Masjid title dispute, exhorting the parties on either side of the fence to treat it merely as a “land issue.”
• Indicating it would not be swayed by the history of religious conflict and violence associated with the Ayodhya site, Chief Justice of India (CJI) Dipak addressed a tense and crowded courtroom, saying “please treat this as a land issue.”

Three­way partition

• The Hindu parties and sects involved in the dispute believe Lord Ram was born on this land.
• Kar sevaks razed the 15th century Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992.
• In September 2010,  a three-judge Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court attempted to bring quietus by pronouncing a three-way partition of the disputed site.
• But this judgment had only led to appeals and cross appeals filed by parties in the Supreme Court.
• Recently,The court warded off third-party intervenors, who said they wanted in as the  Ayodhya appeals dealt with an issue that impacted the nation.
• But a Bench firmly told them that these were appeals and cross-appeals filed in land suits, and parties concerned were quite capable of arguing them without any third party interventions.
• The court then recorded that over 500 exhibits, which include the Bhagavad Gita, Ramayana and documents written in various languages like Sanskrit and Pali, have been filed.
• The depositions of 87 witnesses have also been filed along with the Archaeological Survey of India’s reports.
• However, some translations are yet to be completed and copies of videos have to be taken.
• The court asked the parties to do so in the next two weeks.

Urges dedicated time

• The court should dedicate time to the appeals rather than hear them in the one-hour intervals between Constitution Bench hearings.
• The practice now in the CJI court is that a five-judge Constitution Bench sits morning and afternoon from Tuesdays to Thursdays.
• An hour each is spent on other cases, including PILs, just before the Constitution Bench convenes for the day.
• Petitioner did not want that treatment to be meted out to the Ayodhya case.
• But a visibly annoyed CJI  said these “other cases” are heard in between Constitution Bench hearings because they deal with “over 700 poor litigants waiting for justice”.

Source

The Hindu