Ayodhya case adjourned to Jan 29 after Justice Lalit recuses himself

New Delhi, Jan 10: The Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court that it would only fix the date for hearing the appeals in the Ayodhya case. The Bench made it clear that there would be no hearing on the appeals and only a date would be fixed.

However there was a twist in the case, when Justice U U Lalit recused himself from hearing the case. He took the decision after the Muslim side pointed out that he was once a lawyer for Kalyan Singh in a contempt case related to the disputed land.

Once this was pointed out, Chief Justice of India, Ranjan Gogoi said that all brother judges are of the opinion that it would not be appropriate for him to take part in the hearing of the Ayodhya land dispute.

The CJI said if Justice Lalit was not to take part further, then the hearing needs to be postponed. The case will now be heard on January 29 and a new Bench would need to be constituted.

The Supreme Court's registry will have to give a report on by when all the papers should be translated and the case should be ready for hearing.

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court registry issued a notice, informing that a five-judge bench comprising CJI Ranjan Gogoi, Justices S A Bobde, N V Ramana, Uday U Lalit and DY Chandrachud will be hearing case on January 10.

A three-judge bench of the Supreme Court had on September 27 last year, by 2:1 majority, refused to refer to a five-judge constitution bench for reconsideration of the observations in its 1994 judgement that a mosque was not integral to Islam.

When the matter was last taken up on January 4, there was no indication that the case would be referred to a constitution Bench.As many as 14 appeals have been filed in the Supreme Court against the 2010 Allahabad High Court judgement, delivered in four civil suits, that the 2.77-acre land be partitioned equally among the three parties -- the Sunni Waqf Board, the Nirmohi Akhara and Ram Lalla.

The SC on October 29 last year had fixed the matter in the first week of January before the "appropriate bench".

Later, an application was moved for according an urgent hearing by advancing the date, but the top court had refused the plea, saying it had already passed an order on October 29 relating to the hearing of the matter.