New Supreme Court Bench To Hear Ayodhya Appeals Tomorrow

A new bench of the Supreme Court led by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi is scheduled to hear the Ayodha Ram Mandir case on 29 October. Apart from CJI Gogoi, Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and KM Joseph are on the bench. So far, the case was heard by a bench consisting of former CJI Dipak Misra, Justices Ashok Bhushan and S Abdul Nazeer.

About a month ago, the previous bench came out with a majority opinion of 2:1, ruling against the possibility of referring a question of law in the matter of whether prayers being offered is a practice necessary to Islam.

On 27 September, Justice Nazeer observed that the aforementioned question of what’s necessary in a religion cannot possibly be decided in this hasty manner. He was of the opinion that a seven-judge Bench was required to look into matters of that nature before delving into the Ayodha appeals, The Hindu reported.

Referring to the Ismail Faruqui judgement of 1994, he made the above mentioned statement. He added that a “comprehensive examination” is required regarding the comments made.