Lucknow, September 23: The Supreme Court on Thursday has pushed back the verdict on the Ayodhya verdict by at least week.
The verdict by the Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court was to be delivered tomorrow.
The matter was heard by a Bench headed by Justice R V Raveendran.
Apex court issues notices to contesting parties on the petition seeking stay on the Allahabad High Court order, which refused to defer the verdict in the suit.
The apex court had on Wednesday declined to hear urgently the plea to postpone the Ayodhya title suit verdict by the Allahabad High Court on Friday.
A Bench of the court, while refusing to hear the petition filed by retired bureaucrat Ramesh Chand Tripathi, said that it did not have the “determination” to take up the issue and added that it will be listed before another Bench.
The demand to defer the verdict was admitted under Section 89 of the Civil Procedure Code.
Tripathi said the verdict could flare up communal tension and that both the central and state governments were ill-equipped to handle a law-and-order situation because of the pressures of the Commonwealth Games, the Bihar elections, the floods and violence in Kashmir and Naxal-hit areas.
Tripathi approached the apex court five days after a three-judge Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court rejected his petition to defer the verdict and allow mediation to find a solution to the 60-year-old Ram Janambhoomi-Babri Masjid title suit dispute.
The High Court had also imposed “exemplary costs” of Rs 50,000, terming Tripathi’s efforts for an out-of-court settlement of the dispute as a “mischievous attempt”.
The application, which sought some time to allow mediation, also challenged the costs of Rs 50,000 imposed on him.
In his petition before the High Court, Tripathi had claimed that verdict might disturb communal harmony and lead to violence in the country.
He had referred to an earlier order of the court on July 27 that parties concerned are at liberty to approach the officer on special duty to form a Bench if there was any possibility of disposing the dispute or arriving at an understanding through consensus.
The court had, however, rejected the application terming it as “mischievous” and “an attempt to obstruct the verdict”.
One of the three judges in the Lucknow Bench, however, disagreed with the majority order rejecting the plea for deferring the Ayodhya verdict to allow mediation and gave a dissenting opinion that an amicable settlement could have been explored.
Justice Dharam Veer Sharma while not concurring with the view of the other two judges – Justice S U Khan and Justice Sudhir Agarwal – also said in his dissenting judgement he wasn’t consulted when the three-judge Bench gave the order while dismissing the plea for mediation.
Tripathi’s petition had contended that rejecting his appeal was illegal since one judge was not consulted.
–Agencies