JOIN USParties welcome SC stay order
“We hope that the apex court will do justice,” said the oldest Ayodhya litigant Mohammad Hashim Ansari while reacting to the Supreme Court order.
Though Ansari had taken the initiative to resolve the matter through negotiations soon after the high court verdict, he found little support from other contestants.
Nirmohi Akhara, one of the main plaintiffs in the title suit, also welcomed the apex court order. “We were always of the view that the land should not be divided. It is good that the apex court has stayed the high court order,” said Mahant Bhaskar Das, the chief of the Akhara in Ayodhya.
Well known Sunni cleric and member of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) Maulana Khalid Rasheed Firangimahali welcomed the order. He hoped that the court would decide the matter early.
Samajwadi Party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav, who had criticised the high court verdict and had said that the Muslims were ‘feeling cheated’, said in Lucknow: “The SC had done the right thing.”
The Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court had by a majority order in September last year, divided the land into three parts among the three contesting parties namely the Muslims, Hindus and the Nirmohi Akhara. The high court had dismissed the petition of the Sunni Central Waqf Board, one of the plaintiffs in the matter, seeking possession of the disputed land on the ground that there stood a mosque.
The court had also directed to maintain a status quo at the disputed site for a period of three months and had later extended the stay till August this year.
Two of the three judges on the Bench, Justices Sudhir Agarwal and S U Khan favoured division of the disputed land into three parts, while Justice D V Sharma had given the entire land to the Hindus.
The court had however said that the “portion below the central dome, where at present the idol is kept in the makeshift temple will be allotted to the Hindus in the final decree”.