New Delhi: In a unanimous judgement, the five-judge Supreme Court bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi on Saturday dismissed a petition by the Shia Waqf Board in the Ram-Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid land dispute case and held that the land belongs to the government as per revenue records.
The Constitution bench gave a unanimous verdict dismissing the Shia Waqf Board's appeal in the case over the disputed structure. It said the disputed land was government land in the revenue records.
The Shia Waqf Board is a party to the case since 1989. However, it only staked claim on the disputed land in July 2017. In August the same year, the Board had submitted an affidavit in the apex court challenging the claim of the Sunni Waqf Board.
According to the board’s claim, the mosque at the disputed site was built by Mughal dynast Babur’s commander Mir Baqi, a Shia, and not the emperor himself. In the Shia Waqf Board’s record, the Babri Masjid is named as Masjif Mir Baqi, which was under their control until 1944.
In the petition, the board said that “after the enactment of Muslim Waqf Act (XII of 1936), the (Babri) mosque was included among the Sunni Waqf, a list which was prepared by the Chief Commissioner of Waqf under Section 4 of the Act and published in the Govt Gazette dated 26.2.1944.”
The Shia Waqf board, which had also been a party in the Allahabad High Court, had petitioned the Supreme Court against the Faizabad trial court judgement from 1946 decree in a Special Leave Petition.
They had challenged the judgement in the SC, stating that under the law the ‘waqf created by a Shia Wakif would be a Shia Waqf and could not be a Sunni Waqf.”
Comments
0 comment