Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi headed five member Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court on November 9, 2019 unanimously permitted the construction of a temple at the site where the Babri Masjid once stood. The court said that the disputed land belonged to ‘Bhagwan Shri Ram Virajman’ the deity who was the plaintiff by legal fiction in one of the three claims to the disputed land out of which the appeals had arisen before the Supreme Court.
The constitution bench which delivered verdict comprised Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi, Justices S.A. Bobde, D.Y. Chandrachud, Ashok Bhushan and S. Abdul Nazeer.
The court exercised powers under Article 142 to pass various orders. Article 142 of the Constitution empowers the Supreme Court to “…pass such decree or make such order as is necessary for doing complete justice in any cause or matter pending before it, and any decree so passed or orders so made shall be enforceable throughout the territory of India…”.
The court asked the government to allot a “prominent and suitable” five-acre plot for Muslims to construct a mosque in Ayodhya.
The court also asked the Centre, which had acquired the entire 67.73 acres of land including the 2.77 acres of the disputed Ramjanmabhoomi-Babri Masjid premises in 1993, to formulate a scheme within three months and set up a trust to manage the property and construct a temple.
The Bench directed that the Sunni Central Waqf Board should be given a five-acre plot, either by the Centre from within its acquired area, or by the Uttar Pradesh government “at a suitable, prominent place in Ayodhya”.
The demolition of the 16th century Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992, was “an egregious violation of the rule of law” and “a calculated act of destroying a place of public worship”. The bench observed that the Muslims have been wrongly deprived of a mosque which had been constructed well over 450 years ago.
The court referred to the Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act, 1991, which prohibits the conversion of the status of any place of worship, to say that all religions are equal.
In the judgement running into 1,045 pages, the Supreme Court said a report by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) provided evidence of the remains of a building “that was not Islamic” beneath the demolished mosque.
