The 50-year legal battle for control of the 2.77
acres of Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid will start from scratch, with the Supreme
Court on May 9 faulting and staying the Allahabad
high court order dividing the temple-mosque complex among Ram Lalla (the idol
of Rama), Hindus and Muslims.
A bench, comprising Justices Aftab Alam and R M
Lodha, had heard the petitioners — Sunni Wakf Board, guardian of the idol and
Nirmohi Akhara — only briefly when they took strong exception to the HC order
to partition the land when no party had asked for it. “The fundamental nature
of the decree (partition of land) was not sought by any party. The high court
has gone on a very new path. This is something very surprising,” it said.
“This is a case where entirely new dimension is
given by the High Court. Therefore, the HC judgment must be stayed. Further
proceedings will also be stayed relating to drawing up of the decree by the
HC.” Justices Alam and Lodha further said, “How can decree for partition be
passed as the HC has done? Something very strange has been done by the HC on
its own when no party had sought such a relief.”
The bench stayed the September 30 HC order which
gave two-thirds of the site to Hindu claimants while keeping aside the rest for
Muslim groups, leaving the field open for parties to start anew the litigation
for control of the land where Babri Masjid stood but which has been claimed by
Hindu groups as the site for a Ram temple.
“There
will be status quo and operation of the HC order will be stayed. It needs to be
corrected at this stage. Such a partition decree could not have been passed.
When we stay the operation of the HC judgment, the drawing of the decree gets
automatically stayed,” Justices Alam and Lodha said.
This was a vexed dispute which altered the
political landscape in the 1990s, propelling the BJP to power and vitiating the
Hindu- Muslim equations across vast swathes. In so many words the Apex court
has held that the judgement of the Allahabad High Court was a ‘judicial
overreach’ – that is, it had gone beyond legal and constitutional limitations
within which the court had to sit on judgement. It was only because the
litigants went on appeal that the overreach of a High Court was set at naught,
lest it would have come into force gravely doing injustice to a section of
people. Perhaps in the said case some good intention – other than legal or
constitutional requirement - might have weighed in the judgement.
It will not be out of context here to point out
that the proceedings in the hearings of certain cases do give an impression of
judicial overreach. The judges do have the right, perhaps duty, to elicit legal
and constitutional viewpoints from the counsels for litigants, by putting
questions or making oral observations during the hearings of any case. But certain oral observations and questions
posed by judges in some cases do not necessarily seem to impart or elicit legal
and constitutional points, whatsoever the intention or moral value behind such
observations. When the media is overenthusiastic in reporting proceedings of
such cases, they are blown out of proportion that leaves a different or partisan
impression among the people or persons/ institutions involved in the case.
Ultimately the judgements might not be prejudiced and different from the
impressions created in the interregnum but the damage caused to the person/
institution by perverse media blitzkrieg cannot be compensated.
Hopefully, the judiciary on its own evolve
mechanism to avert judicial overreach at all levels!
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