ayodhya supreme court

Ayodhya: Sunni Waqf Board Not to File Review Petition, Undecided on Five-Acre Plot

The board was one of the main litigants in the title suit.

Lucknow: The Sunni Central Waqf Board decided on Tuesday that it would not file a review petition against the Supreme Court verdict in the Ayodhya case, but was yet to take a call on whether to accept a five-acre alternative plot for a mosque, its chairman Zufar Farooqi said.

“The Board has considered the judgement of the Supreme Court passed in the Babri Masjid case. The Board has reiterated its stand that it will not file any review petition in the Supreme Court,” Farooqi said in a press release issued after a meeting of the board attended by seven of its eight members.

Six members present at the meeting were of the view that the review petition should not be filed, he said, adding, “advocate Abdur Razaaq Khan has put in his dissent as he was in favour of filing review petition.”

According to the Times of India, another member of the board, Imran Mabood Khan, who had said last week that he was in favour of filing a review petition, was unable to attend the meeting due to ill health.

The Sunni board was a main litigant in the Ayodhya case.

Since the Supreme Court’s verdict was announced on November 9, chairperson Faruqi has been of the view that a review petition should not be filed.

Also Read: Ayodhya Verdict: Review Petition Will Harm Indian Muslims, Say Artists and Activists

The meeting also considered whether to accept the five-acre alternative land given by the apex court for building a mosque in Ayodhya, Farooqi said, adding that the members felt they needed more time to decide on the matter so as to ensure that it was appropriate as per the Shariat.

“All further action in compliance with the order of the Supreme Court, including the issue of five-acre land in Ayodhya, are still in consideration of the board and no decision has yet been taken. The members of the board have asked for more time to formulate their views. As and when any decision is taken, it will be communicated separately,” the release said.

In a unanimous verdict on November 9, the Supreme Court had paved the way for the construction of a Ram Temple at the disputed site in Ayodhya. It also directed the Centre to allot a five-acre plot to the Sunni Waqf Board for building a mosque.

The All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) has already said a review petition will be filed against the judgment. It is also against accepting the alternative site to replace the mosque that was demolished in Ayodhya in 1992.

(With PTI inputs)

The Majoritarian Assumptions That Birthed a Populist Verdict

The Supreme Court judgment unjustly placed the onus on Muslims to prove that the Babri Masjid was built without destroying a prior Hindu structure.

The judgment delivered by India’s Supreme Court on the long-pending Ayodhya dispute is nothing less than shocking. Prime Minister Narendra Modi hailed the judgement as one that brought a “new dawn”. However, one wonders how!

Briefly, the judgment validates the Hindu claim that the Babri mosque, built in the sixteenth century by “Muslim invaders” and in place until 1992, was constructed on the ruins of a Hindu temple – believed to be the birthplace of Lord Ram. As is well known, mobilised kar sevaks, in cahoots with the state agencies, demolished the mosque on December 6, 1992.

The SC has ordered the central government to establish a trust and build the Ram temple. However, recognising that “Muslims have been wrongly deprived of a mosque” built “well over 450 years ago,” it ordered allotting a separate plot of land to the Muslim Waqf board elsewhere. Notably, while the order makes it obligatory for the government to build a temple, a similar obligation regarding the mosque is missing. The order states that the Waqf board “would be at liberty” to build a mosque.

It is my argument that the SC judgment is profoundly populist.

It is populist because it is based on a prior unverifiable Hindu majoritarian assumption that Lord Rama was born exactly on the same spot where the Babri Masjid stood. Unjustly placing the onus on Muslims to prove that Babri Masjid was built without destroying a prior Hindu structure, the 1045-page judgement appears as an exercise –at times, fairly a rushed one – to validate the Hindu majoritarian assumption. A similar example of judicial populism is the recent remark by Justice S.R. Sen of the Meghalaya high court that India should have been declared a “Hindu country.”

Majoritarian assumptions in the judgment

There are two core elements of judicial populism. Firstly, judicial populism, writes Upendra Baxi, “identifies the will of the people with justice and morality” to disregard the process of evidence formation, fidelity to fairness and the non-negotiable idea of justice. Second, as I have argued elsewhere, one important feature of Indian populism is the very notion of “authentic” people as coterminous with Hindus, with Muslims being outsiders and alien to the nation.

Also read: Supreme Court’s Ayodhya Verdict Rests on a Glaring Contradiction

The assumption that belief of the Hindu majority equals justice is manifest in the judgement as follows:

“It is thus concluded on the conclusion that faith and belief of Hindus since prior to construction of Mosque and subsequent thereto has always been that Janmaasthan [birthplace] of Lord Ram is the place where Babri Mosque has been constructed.”

Leaving aside the tautology in the sentence – it is thus concluded on the conclusion – curiously, the judgement places belief of Hindus beyond time: “always.”

Yet, it unsuccessfully attempts to provide evidence to Hindus’ belief. Referring to Hindu scriptures, the judgment states that the belief of Hindus about the birthplace of Lord Ram cannot be “groundless”. Do these scriptures specify the exact location of Lord Ram’s birthplace as the same spot as Babri masjid’s? Certainly not! Unaddressed also remains the debate, as noted by anthropologist of Hinduism, Peter van der Veer, about whether Ayodhya of the epic Ramayana is the same as the contemporary Ayodhya.

Devotees walk past the pillars that Hindu nationalist group Vishva Hindu Parishad say will be used to build a Ram temple at the disputed religious site in Ayodhya, October 22, 2019. Photo: Reuters/Danish Siddiqui

The urge to prove the exact birthplace is such that the judgement approvingly cites the statement of one witness, Rajinder Singh (a Hindu, as an analyst speculates). Singh claims that his study of books on “Sikh Cult” makes it “evident” that the “disputed land is a birthplace of Shri Ramchanderji and Guru Nanak Dev [Sikhism’s founder] had sought the darshan of Shri Ram Janam Bhoomi Temple.” Anmol Singh shows the inauthenticity of the entire claim, including the absent citation. Mark that Sikhism is pejoratively called a cult, not a faith.

Faces of alterity

Logically, the burden of proof to demonstrate their respective claims could have been placed on either of the parties to the dispute or both. But by placing this burden singularly on Muslims, the judgment favours Hindus even though archaeological evidence offers no categorical proof that Babri Masjid was built by demolishing a prior structure.

However, it also asserts that the mosque was not built on a “virgin” land. To this end, it refers to artefacts “pertaining to Hindu religious places” found during excavation. Leaving aside the certitude of this “evidence” and the conclusion drawn therefrom, the crucial question that excavation became possible only after the mosque’s destruction is left as unworthy of any discussion.

Watch | ‘Parts of Ayodhya Judgment Laughable, Different Standards of Proof Unfair’

Anthropologists studying archaeology maintain that excavation is not an impartial study of “reality” or “fact” but instead their creation, which in turn re-arrange both reality and fact, often as neat layers or sequences. Such concerns about precise chronologies and periodisation are often implicated in nationalism, which in India is at once against and beholden to colonialism.

One key colonial strategic invention was the depiction of Muslims as conquers-invaders-outsiders and of Hindus as indigenous-subjugated whom the British liberated from Muslims’ tyranny. As Prime Minister, Modi staged this notion of Muslims as outsiders in one of his first speeches in the Parliament when he used the phrase “twelve hundred years of servitude.”

The British depicted Muslims as foreigners to polarise Hindus and Muslims against each other and present their own foreign conquest as enlightened. Historian Barbara Metcalf observes that The History of India, as Told by Its Own Historians (1849) by Henry Elliot was one such strategic manual.

The judgment displays this assumption right on the introductory page: “The lands of our country have witnessed invasions and dissensions.” On the next page, it mentions the rule of Mughal emperor as “conquest” that demolished the ancient Ram temple. Elsewhere, it approvingly cites, “with emphasis supplied,” a colonial gazetteer, which portrays Babur as a “conqueror.”

Importantly, the judgement doubts the interpretation of inscriptions on the mosque, including its precise year of construction, by Alois Führer, a German orientalist. A similar doubt is absent about Führer’s other opinion cited in the judgment: “The old temple of Ramachandra at Janamasthanam must have been a very fine one, for…its columns have been used by the Musalmans in the construction of Babar’s masjid.”

This absence shows subscription to colonial history erected on lies and fantasies. When the British captured Kabul in 1842, they destroyed the central mosque of Ghazna and spuriously claimed its main gate as the gate of Somnath temple. According to historian Mannan Ahmed Asif, to brand Muslim rule as tyranny and consolidate the British East India Company’s domination, Lord Ellenborough (d. 1871) presented the alleged gate of the Somnath temple to Hindu leaders as “memorial of your humiliation”, which was also a “record of your national glory.” The so-called Somnath gate was then taken in a procession and Hindus exhorted to pay respect to.

A statue of Ram in Ayodhya. Photo: Reuters/Danish Siddiqui

My argument is not that Muslim rulers did not destroy temples. Certainly, they did. But they also offered patronage and grants to temples. Likewise, Hindu rulers too destroyed places of worships of other faiths. Anthropologist Peter van der Veer details competition and violent conflict among the Rāmānandī order of monks in Ayodhya.

What I stress is the British creation of history as a polarising paradigm, its subsequent institutionalisation as hegemonic knowledge and its widespread currency in our very present. Lala Lajpat Rai (d. 1928), a famous Hindu freedom fighter, noted the wicked effect of colonial knowledge:

At that time, a book on Indian history called Waqiat-i-Hind used to be taught at Government schools. That book created in me the feeling that Mussalmans had subjected the Hindus to great tyranny. Gradually the respect for Islam that I had acquired from early training began to change into hatred because of study of Waqiat-i-Hind.

A powerful example of the polarising paradigm of colonial history between us-Hindus versus them-Muslims is the misleading distinction between Indic and foreign religions. While Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism are deemed Indian or indigenous, Islam and Christianity are branded as foreign. Though the judgment denies this distinction in the specific context of non-human as juristic personality, this premise informs the judgment throughout. At times, denial as a disclaimer is needed precisely because of the presence of that which is denied.

Also read: Looking Back at the Colonial Origins of Communal and Caste Conflict in India

Faith and belief in justice

My argument and critique of the judgment as an Indian citizen are calls for decolonial jurisprudence liberated simultaneously from colonialism and its close kin, nationalism. Even for the postcolonial Indian period, the judgement continues to use the colonial term Mohammedan rather than Muslim.

My call for a decolonial jurisprudence is difficult to secure. However, it is not impossible. Integral to this jurisprudence is the premise that there are also faiths and beliefs other than the ones the judgment appears to be preoccupied with.

It is the faith and belief of citizens – agnostic, atheist, religious, secular and the like – in democracy and justice beyond the logic of fear and lure. At least, it was this faithful hope that awakened me in the chilling cold during the wee hours of the night on November 8 in Germany to read the SC judgment.

Honorable judges, can democracy and judiciary become faithful to such a hope in justice? A hope, which is not only mine! It is also the hope of a people interpretatively interrupted and yet to be recognised!

Irfan Ahmad is a political anthropologist and senior research fellow at Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Göttingen, Germany. With Pralay Kanungo, he is the co-editor of The Algebra of Warfare-Welfare: A Long View of India’s 2014 Election (Oxford University Press, 2019). He tweets @IrfanHindustan.

Ayodhya and After: Why Muslims Should Not Reject the Five Acre Compromise

The call by some Muslim leaders and organisations will play straight into the hands of the Hindutva organisations.

The Ayodhya verdict by the Supreme Court has drawn much legitimate criticism from various sources, especially for some of its glaring inconsistencies. The sum total of the verdict is that the Babri Masjid, or a new version of it, will have to move from the site it had occupied for over four centuries to an alternate location of five acres at a “prominent place” in Ayodhya.

The verdict hides an awesome irony if we retrace our steps to the 1980s. That is when the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid dispute had begun to emerge on the national agenda. An offer was made by the Hindu side of the dispute to move the entire structure of the Babri Masjid intact on a train to another site, which would not be far from its current location, if the 2.77 acres was handed over to them.

Also read: Ayodhya Verdict: India’s Muslims Sought Dignity, Not Land

The reference was to the technology successfully used in Egypt for moving an ancient monument to another site during the 1950s to make way for the Aswan dam. The offer was rejected on two grounds, one theological, the other political: a piece of land once occupied by the house of Allah was non-negotiable; and that once this demand was met it would lead to a series of similar demands for other sites, especially Kashi and Mathura.

The verdict has implicitly rejected the first ground. And even as it, along with a law enacted in 1991, closes the door on the second, future political twists and turns hold no such guarantee. If the present regime can revoke solemn guarantees given to Kashmir under Article 370 in a jiffy, how long would it take to supersede the 1991 law? A massive popular mobilisation will be on the cards to drop it.

It would be fascinating to speculate on what might – or for that matter might not – have happened if the offer had been accepted. If the Muslim leadership (it is very hard to speak of the Hindu and the Muslim leadership in the singular) had announced that although historical and archeological evidence does not support the theory of a temple, much less a Ram temple, being demolished for the building of the Babri Masjid (which has been argued in writing by many historians and archeologists, including this writer, in fact even by the Archeological Survey of India’s report which is the verdict’s solid basis), in view of the strong belief of our Hindu brothers that this was the site of Lord Ram’s birth, we are happy or at least willing to hand it over to them for a grand Ram temple – provided no such demand is repeated in other cases.

Also read: For A Young Girl Who Fled Home in December 1992, Ayodhya Verdict Brings No ‘Closure’

Most likely, the dispute would have ended peacefully and for all time, and the communal conflagration we have witnessed since the 1980s would have subsided. A most likely result might have been that the BJP and the Sangh parivar would not have gained the traction they have and would not have become the dominant force in Indian politics and society that they are now.

Indeed, Muslims would have been hailed as the victors who honoured the very Indian ethos of sacrifice and tolerance. At least there was one in two chances for this outcome; now there is none. But only great visionary leaders can lead their communities to crossing such far sighted thresholds of history.

Now that the Supreme Court has rightly or wrongly “overruled” both the theological and the political grounds of a compromise and has offered another “compromise” – that of five acres of land for a mosque within Ayodhya, underlining the illegality of the demolition of the Babri masjid – the Muslim community ‘leadership’ has the option of accepting or rejecting it.

Also read: Why Sikhs Are Angry With the Ayodhya Judgment

The All India Muslim Personal Law Board has decided to seek a review of the verdict, which is its constitutional right, but simultaneously to reject the offer of the five acres. The AIMPLB has always seen itself as the exclusive custodian of the Muslims in India and its control over the Shariat jurisprudence as independent of the Indian constitution. This has often landed the Muslim community in jeopardy such as on the Shah Bano case, which is the root cause of the phenomenal rise of Hindutva.

Nothing will suit the Hindutva organisations and their ideology more than this rejection by “Muslims”. For central to that ideology is the “othering” of the Muslim community, the difference between Hindus and Muslims commuted into active and irremediable hostility. The rejection of the compromise will lend even greater strength to the existing ‘us versus them’ ideology, the community virtually accepting its status as ‘them’. The victims of the ‘us versus them’ ideology are always on both sides, but then, always, one side pays an inordinately higher price for it than the other.

The author taught medieval history at JNU.

For A Young Girl Who Fled Home in December 1992, Ayodhya Verdict Brings No ‘Closure’

The Supreme Court ruling is riddled with contradictions but its biggest problem is the loss of faith it has triggered among Muslims about the possibility of justice.

I was travelling abroad when the Supreme Court registry announced that the Ayodhya verdict would be pronounced on Saturday morning. My immediate instinct as a journalist was to cut short my trip and take the first available flight back to Delhi.

I was driven, of course, by the professional impulse of covering this momentous day first hand, but also because the issue had a lot of personal meaning for me and I wanted to be back with my family and friends and colleagues – my own people, so to speak – when the judgment was delivered.

The Supreme Court decided in favour of the Hindu plaintiff – arguing that Muslims could not sufficiently substantiate their claim over the disputed land – and now a Ram temple will be built at the place where a mosque, which stood for close to five centuries, was illegally brought down on December 6, 1992.

Many newspaper editorials have hailed the judgment for finally bringing ‘closure’ to an issue that for decades polarised the Indian polity and resulted in violence and the loss of lives. But has this judgment really brought closure for India’s Muslims? Does it give them the chance to move on?

Also read: Supreme Court’s Ayodhya Verdict Rests on a Glaring Contradiction

Sitting in The Wire’s studio on Saturday, I tried my best to fulfil my professional duties of dispassionately analysing the judgment but memories from 27 years ago constantly interfered with my train of thought. Memories of how, as a 12-year-old girl, I held my younger brother – who was barely a few weeks old – and ran for my life through the pitch-black darkness of the night on December 6, 1992.

All this while, I thought that I had buried that little girl from western Uttar Pradesh in the graveyard of my memory, never to return and haunt me with her vulnerability and insecurity again. I believed I had left behind the desperate sounds of our Muslim neighbours banging at our door to tell us that a riot had broken out, shouting, ‘Us taraf se chadhaai aa rahi hai’ (People from the other side will be here any moment), and asking us to leave our house to save our lives.

VHP procession marking the 23rd anniversary of the demolition of Babri Masjid. Credit: File Photo

I remember my stubborn father not paying any heed to the pleas of his neighbours, insisting there was no need to run because his ‘Hindu neighbours could never harm him or his children’. I remember his tearful eyes when the realisation dawned that we were indeed in danger. That look on his face while locking our house and looking at it one last time with love and pain before fleeing for a ‘safer’ place.

I had thought those scary hours of getting separated from my family after the riots broke out, or those long, cold nights of living in a refugee camp set up by fellow Muslims for families displaced by riots, those restless days that turned into unending weeks before I could finally go back to school and be reunited with my best friend Vandana, were a distant memory.

But I was wrong. For when I heard TV anchors and even their liberal studio guests insisting the Ayodhya judgment had brought “closure”, those memories came cascading back.

Also read: Ayodhya Dispute: Was Public Peace Privileged Over Justice?

Besides other aspects of the judgment that several jurists are finding problematic, there is a fundamental contradiction that simply does not allow for ‘closure’. The Supreme Court itself noted that the forced placing of idols inside the mosque that took place one night in December 1949 was illegal and the mosque was thus “desecrated”. It also unequivocally acknowledged that the demolition of the Babri Masjid was unlawful.

But the tragic irony is that it still ends up handing the disputed land to none other than the perpetrators who demolished the mosque and unleashed violence across India, including in my little qasba.

The judgment is not just self-contradictory but tilts unmistakably towards one side. The Hindu plaintiffs were held to a lower burden of proof of possession than the Muslim plaintiffs. The court recognised that both parties had claims and worshipped at the disputed site but chose a majoritarian conception of ‘social peace’ to give the land to one side rather than doing what was right or just.

Also read: What the Supreme Court’s Ayodhya Judgment Means for the Future of the Republic

The reaction to the Ayodhya judgment from the main opposition parties – both national and those which operate from Uttar Pradesh, including the ones that call themselves ‘secular’ and claim first right over Muslim votes – has been disappointing. They too believe the judgment is the best solution to this age-old dispute. Barring the few honourable exceptions among political commentators and jurists who have expressed their reservations or even criticism about the judgement, the country at large seems to have welcomed it.

The Muslim community has also largely been quiet and non-reactive. A few religious/social leaders maintain that they respect the Supreme Court’s verdict although they disagree with it. But should the lack of reaction from the Muslim community at large be seen as acceptance of the verdict? Has the court been successful in its ultimate objective of delivering a verdict not leading to disturbance of social peace?

Or is this silence emanating from the fear Muslims at large have of a backlash against them from not just the majority community but from a system that has so openly worked against them and their interests since the Narendra Modi government first came to power in 2014? Has the humiliation and helplessness resulting from brazen anti-Muslim politics – including gau raksha and ‘love jihad’ – made them lose hope for justice and parity in their own country?

Also read: Justice A.K. Ganguly: ‘If Babri Masjid Was Still Standing, Would SC Have Had it Demolished?‘

What can be worse for a democracy when its largest minority group does not hope for justice but fearfully settles for a verdict that they know is no less than injustice to them? It was the Muslims who suffered the razing of their place of worship; they were also the victims of the violence which followed. The community sought redressal and placed its faith in the institutions for justice.

From patiently waiting for the criminals who demolished the Babri Masjid to be punished to the expectation that the title suit outcome would put an end to the Hindutva agenda of converting mosques into temples , the majority of the Muslims of India accepted the supremacy of the law. But today, they have retuned empty handed from the Supreme Court.

From the government to opposition, from civil society, the media and the courts, Muslims of India today find themselves standing alone in the fight for their existence with no hope for equality or dignified citizenry.

And that scared and vulnerable young girl who had to flee her home because of the actions of violent majoritarian goons 27 years ago has the right to say she feels disappointed and betrayed by what the highest court of the country has done.

Sunni Waqf Board Should Not Accept 5-Acre Plot in Ayodhya: Jamiat Chief

“We don’t want land. Muslims don’t need land,” the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind chief said.

New Delhi: The Sunni Waqf Board should not accept the 5-acre plot which the Supreme Court in its Ayodhya judgment has directed the Centre to allot for a mosque, head of prominent Muslim body Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind (JUEH) Maulana Arshad Madani said on Thursday.

He said the Jamiat had asserted that the Supreme Court verdict in the Ayodhya case, based on evidence, will be respected by it.

Maulana Madani, however, said the judgment was “beyond understanding”.

Sources said an executive committee meeting of the Jamiat on Thursday could not reach a consensus on whether to file a review petition on the Ayodhya verdict and a decision will be taken on Friday.

The court accepted that placing idols in a mosque and demolishing it is illegal.”But the court gave its decision in favour of those responsible for it,” he said.

The JUEH president also said the court has accepted that the Babri mosque was not built by demolishing a temple during Babur’s rule.

Also read: Justice A.K. Ganguly: ‘If Babri Masjid Was Still Standing, Would SC Have Had it Demolished?’

Settling a fractious issue that goes back more than a century, the Supreme Court, in its verdict in the Babri Masjid-Ram Janmabhoomi title case on Saturday, said the entire 2.77 acres of disputed land should be handed over to the deity Ram Lalla, who was one of the three litigants in the case.

The five-judge Constitution bench also directed the Centre to allot a 5-acre plot to the Sunni Waqf Board in Ayodhya to build a mosque.

Asked about his views on whether the land should be accepted by the Muslim side, Madani said, “The land has not been given to us. They have given the land to the Sunni Waqf Board.”

“Our opinion is that the Sunni Waqf Board should not accept the land, but finally it is up to them,” said the head of JUEH, which was also a litigant in the case.

“The issue is about rights not about land. We don’t want land. Muslims don’t need land,” he said.

Madani said that according to religion, a mosque remains a mosque irrespective of ‘namaz’ is being held or not.

“The SC said it was a mosque and not made by destructing a temple. For us, according to religion, it is still a mosque,” Madani said.

Responding to a question, he asserted that whatever they have to say on the verdict they will say only within the country.

CJI-Designate Justice Bobde May Have to Author More Judgments to Match His Predecessors

While Justice Bobde has been part of 424 benches which have delivered judgments, he has authored only 62 judgments so far.

New Delhi: Chief Justice of India-designate Justice S.A. Bobde may have his hands full on the administrative side when he takes over as the next CJI on November 18. But as a judge, he has one thing to be concerned about before he completes his term on April 23, 2021: His score-card as an author of judgments and the number of times his judgments are cited by his peers.

According to the legal research firm Manupatra’s Judge Analytics, Justice Bobde has authored just 62 judgments since he joined the Supreme Court as a judge on April 12, 2013, and his judgments have been cited in only 56 judgments.

The number of times judgments authored by a judge are cited in subsequent judgments reflects his or her influence in setting legal precedents. Considering that Justice Bobde will complete about eight years in the Supreme Court during his tenure as a judge and as CJI, how does his record so far compare with that of his predecessors, and his would-be successors in office?

As the CJI is also the administrative head of the Supreme Court acting as master of the roster, the time which he is expected to spend on authoring judgments may be limited, but nevertheless significant, as it will determine his place in the court’s history – as far as the number of judgments authored by a judge, and cited by other judges is taken into consideration.

As per convention, the senior-most judge on the bench decides who will author the main judgment, in case there is a consensus among the judges on the outcome of a case. However, this does not preclude authorship of concurring judgments, when a judge finds he or she has more to say than simply express his or her agreement and dissents.

Also read: New CJI, Old Concerns of Judicial Independence

While the number of judgments authored by a judge may be no indication about the competence of a judge, it does tell us about the contribution of the judge to law and its evolution.

While Justice Bobde has been part of 424 benches which have delivered judgments, he has authored only 62 judgments so far. The year-wise breakdown of his authorship of judgments and his being a part of benches which delivered judgments are as follows:

Year	Judgment authored	Part of Bench
2013	7	71
2014	15	87
2015	6	62
2016	7	47
2017	13	76
2018	11	56
2019	3	25 (so far)

Considering that Justice Bobde began to preside over division benches in 2017 by virtue of his seniority within the Supreme Court as determined by the date of joining the court, it appears that his colleagues on the benches have received more opportunities to author judgments delivered by them.

The current CJI Ranjan Gogoi has so far authored 214 judgments, while he has been cited in 183 judgments. CJI Gogoi’s tenure as a judge from April 23, 2012, to November 17, 2019, would have covered a period of seven years and seven months, less than what Justice Bobde could claim.

Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi. PHoto: PTI/Shahbaz Khan

CJI Gogoi’s immediate predecessor, Dipak Misra authored 412 judgments, while he has been cited in 398 judgements. His tenure lasted for about seven years from October 10, 2011, to October 1, 2018.

CJI J.S. Khehar authored 142 judgments, while he has been cited in 115 judgments. His tenure was for six years from September 13, 2011, to August 27, 2017.

CJI T.S.Thakur authored 233 judgments, with 194 citations. His tenure lasted for seven years and one month from November 17, 2009, to January 3, 2017.

CJI H.L. Dattu authored 116 judgments, with 92 citations. He served the court for seven years from December 17, 2008 to December 2, 2015.

Also read: Give and Take: The Supreme Court’s Way of Business

CJI R.M.Lodha authored 235 judgments, with 200 citations. He spent six years and ten months at the court from December 17, 2008, to September 27, 2014.

CJI-designate Bobde’s successor-in-waiting Justice N.V.Ramana has already authored 135 judgments with 110 citations. Justice Ramana joined the court on February 17, 2014, and his date of superannuation is August 26, 2022. He will complete eight years and six months at the time of his superannuation.

Justice Uday Umesh Lalit, who will succeed Justice Ramana as the CJI in 2022, has already authored 196 judgments with 152 citations. He joined the Court on August 13, 2014 and retires on November 8, 2022.

Justice D.Y.Chandrachud, who will succeed Justice Lalit, joined the Court on May 13, 2016, and will retire on November 10, 2024, after completing eight years and six months. He has already authored 234 judgments, with 171 citations.

Most of Justice Bobde’s predecessors as the CJIs had authored more number of judgments, and claimed more citations, according to Manupatra. CJI P. Sathasivam, with a tenure of six years and eight months, authored 338 judgments, with 278 citations. CJI Altamas Kabir, with a tenure of seven years and ten months, authored 361 judgments with 288 citations. CJI S.H. Kapadia, with a tenure of eight years and ten months, authored 304 judgments with 261 citations. CJI K.G. Balakrishnan, with a tenure of nine years and three months, had authored 214 judgments, with 127 citations.

CJI Y.K.Sabharwal authored 175 judgments, with 129 citations. CJI R.C. Lahoti authored 335 judgments with 249 citations. CJI Rajendra Babu had a very limited tenure as the CJI lasting for a month, but as a judge for nearly seven years, authored 421 judgments, with 261 citations.

CJI V.N. Khare, who served for about seven years as a judge at the apex court, authored 170 judgments and earned 86 citations. CJI G.B. Pattanaik, who also served for about seven years as a judge and 40 days as the CJI, authored 398 judgments and earned 215 citations.

Also read: A Multi-Layered Indian Judicial Crisis

CJI B.N. Kirpal, during his seven years at the apex court, authored 184 judgments and earned 114 citations. CJI S.P. Bharucha had the opportunity to serve the court for ten years as a judge. He authored 339 judgments and earned 200 citations.

CJI A.S. Anand, who also served the court for about ten years, authored 191 judgments and earned 91 citations.

Among those who authored less than 100 judgments include CJI M.N. Venkatachaliah, whose tenure as a judge in the Supreme Court lasted seven years. He authored only 82 judgments with 70 citations.

CJI M.H. Kania, whose term as a judge lasted for about five years, authored 91 judgments with 56 citations.

CJI K.N. Singh had a tenure of about five years, and as CJI, served just for 17 days – the lowest in the court’s history. He authored 85 judgments and secured 63 citations.

CJI Patanjali Sastri, whose term as a Judge lasted only about four years, authored 75 judgments and secured 47 citations. The first CJI, H.J. Kania, whose term ended within two years because of his untimely death, authored 36 judgments and earned 17 citations.

It should be noted, however, that those CJIs who authored less than 100 judgments, mostly belonged to early years of the court’s history, when the court had to hear less number of cases, and the sanctioned strength of judges of the Supreme Court was also less in number.

File Photo: Justice S.A. Bobde with Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi in November 2018. Photo: PTI/Kamal Singh

At the Supreme Court, Justice Bobde has so far pronounced judgments in 29 criminal cases, and six arbitration cases. The remaining cases pertained to civil, service, property, banking, education, excise, family, and election matters.

Also read: Ayodhya Dispute ‘One of the Most Important Cases in the World’: CJI-Designate Bobde

Among constitutional matters, each of his three judgments is considered noteworthy. In Abhiram Singh v C.D. Commachen, he sided with the majority judges in seven-judge bench, which held that an appeal on the basis of religion of the voter as well as the candidate would constitute an offence under the Representation of People Act.

Although the nine-Judge bench had unanimously declared the right to privacy as a fundamental right in Justice K.S. Puttaswamy v Union of India, Justice Bobde thought it appropriate to author a separate concurring judgment, elucidating his views.

In Jindal Stainless Ltd. v State of Haryana, while agreeing with the majority judges on the nine-judge bench, Justice Bobde authored his concurring judgment separately on the question that taxes are not restrictions on freedom of trade, commerce and intercourse guaranteed by Article 301.

Justice Bobde has never been in minority in any of the judgments authored by him. This is an indication that in the Ayodhya case, if at all there is any dissent by any of the five judges on the bench, Justice Bobde may find himself as a part of the majority.

Ayodhya Dispute ‘One of the Most Important Cases in the World’: CJI-Designate Bobde

The apex court’s judgment in the case is expected to be delivered soon.

Jaipur: In an interview to NDTV, Justice Sharad Arvind Bobde, who is all set to be the next chief justice of India on November 17, has termed the century-old, politically and communally sensitive Ayodhya title dispute case as one of the ‘most important’ in the world.

When the interviewer asked Bobde which case is a milestone in his career and if Ayodhya case could be the one, he replied, “Ayodhya is definitely important. It is one of the most important cases in the world today.”

This statement by the CJI-designate has led to a spate of reactions on social media. It must be noted that after Hindu militants (kar sevaks) of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) demolished the Babri masjid in 1992, communal violence took the lives of several hundred people across India, mostly Muslims.

Bobde is part of the five-judge constitution bench that heard the appeals over 40 days against the 2010 verdict of the Allahabad high court in the case regarding ownership of 2.77 acres of disputed land in Ayodhya. In 2010, the Allahabad HC ordered a three-way division of the disputed land between the Nirmohi Akhara sect, the Uttar Pradesh Sunni Central Waqf Board and ‘Ram Lalla Virajman’, the deity represented by individuals close to the VHP.

The Supreme Court constitution bench reserved its order on October 16 and is set to pronounce the judgment before the incumbent CJI, Ranjan Gogoi, retires on November 17.

Also Read: New CJI, Old Concerns of Judicial Independence

Speculation was already rife that a significant judgment could be in the offing. Now, the CJI-designate calling the dispute as “most important case in the world,” has added to those speculations.

The Hindu parties to the dispute have argued that the entire land is the birthplace of Lord Ram and hence should be given to them to build a temple. Contradicting their claims, the Muslim parties have said mere belief doesn’t confer ownership rights on a place.

During the hearing, both parties to the dispute referred to the reports of historians and the Archaeological Survey of India, land documents prepared under the British rule and other evidence to corroborate their claims.

On the other hand, the criminal case against those who demolished the Babri masjid on December 6, 1992 has been extended to April 2020. Apart from lakhs of kar sevaks accused in the case, the prominent politicians indicted are senior BJP leaders L.K. Advani, Uma Bharti, Vinay Katiyar, Murli Manohar Joshi and Kalyan Singh (former governor of Rajasthan); VHP leaders Ashok Singhal, Giriraj Kishore, Vishnu Hari Dalmia and Champat Rai Bansal; Shiv Sena leaders Bar Thackeray, Moreshwar Save, Satish Pradhan; Hindu Mahasabha’s Mahant Avaidhyanath; Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Nyas president Mahant Nritya Gopal Das; and Sadhvi Ritambhara.