Who are the mediators in Ayodhya dispute case?

New Delhi, Mar 8: The Supreme Court on Friday appointed a mediation panel in the Ayodhya case. The bench, headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi, appointed a three-member panel to act as mediators. The panel will be headed by former Supreme Court judge FM Kalifullah with spiritual leader Sri Sri Ravi Shankar and mediation expert Sriram Panchu as other members.

Fakkir Mohamed Ibrahim Kalifulla:
Born onn 23 July 1951, Kalifulla is a former judge of the Supreme Court of India. Kalifulla enrolled as an advocate on 20 August 1975, after which he began practicing labour law in the law firm of T.S. Gopalan & Co.

On 2 March 2000, he was appointed as a judge of the Madras High Court. In February 2011, he became a member of the High Court of Jammu and Kashmir and was appointed to serve as the acting Chief Justice two months later.

In September 2011, he was named as the Chief Justice of High Court of Jammu and Kashmir. On 2 April 2012, he was named to the Supreme Court of India, sworn in by Chief Justice Sarosh Homi Kapadia. Justice Kalifulla retired from the Supreme Court of India on 22 July 2016.

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:

Born on 13 May 1956, Ravi Shankar is an Indian spiritual leader. He is frequently referred to as "Sri Sri" or as Guruji or Gurudev. He founded the Art of Living Foundation in 1981, a volunteer-based NGO providing social support to the people. In 1997, he established a Geneva-based charity, the International Association for Human Values, an NGO that engages in relief work and rural development and aims to foster shared global values.

Ravi Shankar's efforts at mediation in the Ayodhya dispute in 2017 received a mixed response from both Hindu and Muslim leaders. Based on Supreme Court of India's suggestion for an out-of-court settlement, he proposed a mutual compromise where both communities "gift" neighbouring pieces of land to each other. This proposal was met with a lot of skepticism and resistance.

Sriram Panchu:
Sriram Panchu is a senior advocate and mediator. He is a founder of The Mediation Chambers, which offers services in mediation and med-arb. He is the president of the Association of Indian Mediators and a director on the board of the International Mediation Institute (IMI). He set up India's first court-annexed mediation centre in 2005, and has been instrumental in making mediation a part of India's legal system.

Panchu has mediated a large number of complex and high-value disputes across the range of commercial, corporate and contractual disputes in different parts of India. He is a certified mediator on the panel of the Singapore International Mediation Centre. He was appointed by Supreme Court to mediate a 500 square kilometre dispute between the states of Assam and Nagaland, and another public dispute involving the Parsi community in Bombay.