The Supreme Court has served a notice to senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader L K Advani, Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray, BJP leader Murli Manohar Joshi and 21 others citing a conspiracy to raze the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya.
The Supreme Court will constitute a special bench to hear the controversial Ayodhya title suit by the end of September. Dr S Q R Ilyas, convenor of the committee on Babri Masjid, told media personnel that because of some procedural delays, the court would resume hearing by that time. Though attempts to reach an out-of-court settlement have been made in the past, there was no possibility of that now, he said.
'This is an emotional issue and cannot be resolved by law alone.' 'This can be resolved only by creating trust again.' 'So much bloodletting has taken place, there is no point in going on and on.' 'Let us sit together and negotiate'
"For an apology to Muslims, a Muslim Prime Minister is needed," Singh, who recently quit all organisational posts in his party, said while campaigning for party colleague Abu Azmi's son Farhan, who is contesting Bhiwandi assembly by-election in Maharashtra.
The state government has allotted the five-acre plot in Ayodhya's Dhannipur for the construction of the mosque on the directive of the apex court.
"Was this the place of birth of Lord Ram? Was the Babri mosque built after demolition of temple? And whether the mosque in question was built in accordance with the tenets of Islam?"
In an obvious bid to win back his Muslim supporters, Samajwadi Party president Mulayam Singh Yadav on Thursday publicly tendered an apology for his political liaisons with former Bharatiya Janata Party leader Kalyan Singh.Singh was the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh when the Babri Masjid was demolished by angry karsevaks on December 6, 1992.Without referring to Kalyan directly, Mulayam issued a personally signed press statement saying, "I must confess that it was a blunder."
"I don't call it a debate. I call it an introspection," said Gurudas Dasgupta, Member of Parliament of the Communist party of India from West Bengal while kick starting the rarest of the rare debate in Lok Sabha on Monday -- on perhaps the most politically sensitive issue of independent India.
Security has been tightened in the hill shrine of Sabarimala in view of the anniversary of Babri Masjid demolition. Contingents of police, CRPF, National Disaster Response Force and armed commandos had been deployed in vital spots at the uphill 'Sannidhanam', where the temple complex is located, and downhill Pampa, senior police officials said.
Anupam Gupta, counsel for Liberhan Commission from 1999 to 2007, said Vajpayee cannot be indicted because he was neither given notice or summoned.
The Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha has decided to move the Supreme Court, challenging the Allahabad high court verdict on the Ramjanmbhoomi-Babri Masjid title suits, contending that the entire disputed site should be allotted to Hindus. The Mahasabha will submit that the high court had erred in directing that 2.77 acres of disputed land be divided into three parts among Muslims, Hindus and Nirmohi Akhara.
'If the judgment succeeds in nudging Hindus and Muslims to find a compromise ensuring peace, who am I to question it?'
The Hindu Mahasabha, one of the parties in the Ayodhya title suits, has filed an objection relating to the judgement of the Allahabad high court on the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid dispute.
Angry BJP and other opposition members stormed the well disrupting proceedings for the 17th working day to press for a JPC to go into allocation of radio-waves -- a demand consistently rejected by government.
"We are not ready to part with any bit of land in or around the disputed Ayodhya site, where we wish to erect a grand temple to mark the birthplace of Lord Ram", VHP supremo Ashok Singhal told a press conference in Lucknow on Wednesday afternoon.
Senior Congress leader Digvijay Singh has said the verdict of the Allahabad High Court in the Ram Janambhoomi-Babri Masjid title suit was the best possible judgment under the circumstances.
All India Muslim Personal Law Board Abdul Raheem Qureshi and Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi voice their concerns about the Ayodhya verdict.
Lashing out at the Congress for raising the Babri Masjid demolition issue 'again and again', the Bharatiya Janata Party on Tuesday said the law is taking its course in the matter and advised the ruling party against giving 'edifications'. "It has been said several times that a procedure is separately going on for December 6 (the day of Babri Mosque demolition). This is a legal action," BJP's chief spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad said.
While Modi had a party and an organisation that supported him, all Mulayam, a self-made man with no inheritance in politics, had was a set of (fairly flexible) beliefs.
Hashim Ansari, who was the first Muslim claimant to the 16th century Babri Masjid 61 years ago, took everybody by surprise on Sunday when he took the first step to draw the final curtain on the Ayodhya issue.
'India has moved on in other ways, but the common man in the streets still has a lot of links attached to religion. And till such a time there is a separation of religion from politics we will not be able to move on,' feels former Union home secretary Madhav Godbole.
The Congress on Friday favoured a negotiated settlement to the Ayodhya issue saying all right thinking people should work for a compromise within the next three months in wake of the Allahabad high court verdict.
Ahead of the crucial Allahabad high court verdict on the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjd dispute, the Maharashtra home department is gearing to maintain peace among the two communities in Mumbai and adjoining areas.
The bench is likely to constitute a three-judge bench for hearing as many as 14 appeals filed against the Allahabad high court judgement.
In the aftermath of the Supreme Court's decision to stay the Allahabad High Court final judgement on the Babri Masjid title suit, rediff.com's Vicky Nanjappa spoke to Jafaryab Jilani, the lawyer who is representing the Muslim organistaions in this litigation.
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'How can someone who has never been associated with the movement and never had darshan of Ram Lalla mediate on the matter of temple construction? We have gone to jail for it, faced house arrest and have been fighting court cases. Sri Sri does not qualify to mediate on the matter.'
As the Ayodhya title suit verdict date nears, the News Broadcasters Association has set guidelines for electronic media asking them not to speculate about the judgement and not to show the footage of 1992 Babri Masjid demolition.
As the country's largest opposition political party with strong roots among the majority community, the BJP has a special stake in ensuring communal peace and harmony.
In a late Monday evening surprise development, the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad high court called upon rival parties in the much-debated Ayodhya case to explore possibilities of a last-minute amicable settlement on the vexed issue.
"The government should table the report at the earliest along with ATR. The Commission has submitted the report after a delay (about 17 years) and the government should not delay it any further," Singh told media persons outside Parliament.
While charges against top Bharatiya Janata Party and Vishwa Hindu Parishad leaders including Lal Krishna Advani, Uma Bharti and Vinay Katiyar were already dropped by the high court, the most prominent among those who were on the firing line was former Faizabad district magistrate R N Srivastava and mafia don turned BJP member of Parliament Brij Bhushan Saran Singh
'Lord Rama is still in the same shape as he was before the disputed structure fell...'
'The jurisprudence of a modern secular State has to be strictly rational.' 'Rather than aastha and aqeedah, our jurisprudence as well as the executive and legislature have to act in accordance with Constitutional rationality,' argues Mohammad Sajjad.
The two-time CM, who had also been the Rajasthan Governor, died at a Lucknow hospital on Saturday after prolonged illness.
The apex court said an appropriate bench constituted by it will pass an order on January 10 for fixing the date of hearing in the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid land dispute title case.
An interview with Mark Tully, former chief of bureau, BBC-Delhi about his career and more...
The Bharatiya Janata Party on Wednesday dubbed the Liberhan Commission report, probing the Babri Masjid demolition, as devoid of any credibility and said the 'leakage' of the report was as dubious as its content.
The Liberhan Commission report on the demolition of Babri Masjid on Wednesday generated heat in the Rajya Sabha with the Congress and the Samajwadi Party squarely blaming the Bharatiya Janata Party for the demolition of the historic structure, while the main opposition debunked the report.
Seventeen years after the Babri Masjid was pulled down, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh chief Mohan Bhagwat on Saturday said there was no question for the Sangh to regret for what had happened and maintained that their full support to the "Ram temple movement" would continue.
