10 points: No Ram Mandir before 2019; matter adjourned for January 2019

Supreme Court adjourns the matter till January 2019 to fix the date of hearing in Ayodhya. This is a big setback for the Hindu petitioners who were looking forward to the verdict enthusiastically as the election year approaches. Here are the 10 developments of the case so far:

1.  Hearing adjourned till January. Supreme Court adjourns the matter till January 2019 to fix the date of hearing in Ayodhya.

2. This is a big setback for the Hindu petitioners who were looking forward to the verdict enthusiastically

3. The Supreme Court has adjourned till January the hearing of a clutch of pleas challenging the Allahabad high courts 2010 judgment which ruled that the disputed land on the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid site in Ayodhya be divided into three parts.

4. The court said that the issue will come up before appropriate bench in January. No decision was taken on Monday on the date of hearing and the composition of the bench.

5. On September 27, the Supreme Court declined to revisit the observations in its 1994 judgment that a mosque is not integral to Islam, clearing the way for hearing in the politically charged Ayodhya land dispute.

6. In a majority verdict of 2:1, the apex court bench headed by former Chief Justice Dipak Misra said the Babri Masjid-Ram Janmabhoomi civil suit has to be decided on the basis of evidence and the previous verdict has no relevance to it.

7. The construction of the Ram temple was an important part of BJPs manifesto ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha elections and also the 2017 Uttar Pradesh assembly elections both of which it won.

8. Today was an important day as hee Supreme Court was likely to hear today a batch of pleas challenging the Allahabad high court’s 2010 verdict.

9. A bench of Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and K M Joseph would hear the appeals filed in the matter.

10. Justice Ashok Bhushan, who had penned the judgment for himself and the Chief Justice of India, had said it has to find out the context in which the five-judge bench had delivered the 1994 verdict.

But there was disagreement also:
However, Justice S Abdul Nazeer had disagreed with the two judges and had said whether a mosque is integral to Islam has to be decided considering religious belief which requires detailed consideration.

The court had on September 27 said the civil suit on land dispute would be heard by a three-judge bench on October 29.

The issue whether a mosque is integral to Islam had cropped up when the three-judge bench was hearing the appeals filed against the Allahabad high court’s verdict.