Adjourned in 60 seconds: What exactly happened during crucial Ayodhya hearing in Supreme Court?

It took just 60 seconds for the Supreme Court bench led by Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi to decide the fate of crucial Ayodhya case hearing. On Friday, when the bench resumed the hearing in the title suit, the CJI adjourned the hearing till January 10 and also said that an appropriate bench will give further orders in the case. The 1-minute hearing did not see any arguments from either side, news agency ANI said. Last year, on October 28, the Supreme Court had said that the matter will be listed in the first week of January for fixing the date of hearing. 

The matter listed on Friday were supposed to hear the petitions filed against the 2010 Allahabad High Court judgment that ordered equal distribution of the 2.77-acre land among the three parties -- the Sunni Waqf Board, the Nirmohi Akhara and Ram Lalla.

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Last year, the Supreme Court had denied urgent hearing in the case, saying that it wasn’t the ‘priority’. Earlier during the hearing of the Ayodhya land dispute case, a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court had refused to refer to a five-judge constitution bench the issue of reconsideration of its observation in the 1994 judgment that a mosque was not the integral part of Islam.

The Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid dispute is a centuries-old flash point between two communities. The mosque was demolished by karsevaks on December 6, 1992 in Ayodhya, following which the country witnessed massive riots in which over 2,000 people were killed.

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The Supreme Court’s order comes days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi turned down the idea of Ram Mandir ordinance and said that the top court should decide and then his government would take required steps. This was seen by many as PM Modi opting for soft-Hindutva approach. Reacting to PM Modi’s remark, NDA ally Shiv Sena said that it is good that the Prime Minister has made his stand clear on the contentious issue. But the argument didn’t go down well with the RSS, which has been aggressively demanding the construction of Ram Temple in UP’s Ayodhya.