Ayodhya vedict delay petition untenable: Sunni Central Wakf Board

NEW DELHI - The Sunni Central Wakf Board Monday said the petition by retired bureaucrat Ramesh Chandra Tripathi seeking the deferment of the Allahabad High Court’s verdict in the Babri Masjid-Ramjanmabhoomi title case was “untenable, misconceived and frivolous” and needed to be dismissed.

The board’s affidavit, filed in the apex court registry, also said the petitioner’s “assumption of so-called repercussions or apprehensions was totally unfounded”.

Seeking the vacation of interim stay restraining the Allahabad High Court from pronouncing the Ayodhya title suit verdict, it said there was no such apprehension among the general public of Ayodhya and Faizabad.

Describing Tripathi’s petition as nothing but an attempt to thwart the entire judicial efforts of last 60 years and put the clock back, the affidavit said that Tripathi has not appeared in the high court to plead his case in the last 19 years.

The only occasion he appeared in the court was in May 2005 when he told that court that he had no witness to present before the court and his evidence was closed, the affidavit noted.

It said it was “evident that Tripathi has no following amongst the Hindus and such a person could not be expected to undertake the exercise of out-of-court mutual settlement between the contending parties”.

Given the nature and background of the Babri Masjid-Ramjanmabhoomi dispute, the affidavit contended that it could not be resolved through mediation, conciliation or arbitration.

Another respondent Mohammad Hashim said the efforts for negotiated settlement were being made since 1986. It started with Jagadguru Shankracharya of Kanchikoti inviting (noted Islamic scholar Maulana Syed Abul Hasan Ali Nadwi) Ali Mian in 1986 to find a mutually acceptable resolution of the dispute.

Then several initiatives were taken by the then Prime Ministers V.P. Singh, Chandra Shekhar, and P.V. Narasimha Rao and former president R. Venkataraman.

The Shankracharya of Kanchikoti made another attempt to settle the dispute through the negotiation route by roping in the All India Muslim Personal Law Board president, Maulana Rabey Hasni Nadwi but this effort also proved fruitless.

He said that the AIMPLB too has repeatedly said that the dispute could only be resolved by the verdict of the court.