As the nation awaits with bated breath the Allhahabad high court’s crucial judgement on contentious Ayodhya “title suit” fixed for Friday, suspense prevailed whether the Supreme Court would intervene to get the pronouncement deferred after a bench refused to hear a plea for postponement of the verdict on technical grounds.
Advocate Ramesh Chandra Tripati, whose petition for deferring the verdict was rejected by the Allhabad high court’s Lucknow bench of three judges, seized of the title suit, on Wednesday moved the apex court with a postponement plea.
In frantic efforts to get the case listed for urgent hearing, Mr Tripathi mentioned it before Justice Kabir’s bench in the morning and was asked to come in the afternoon.
But at 2 pm Justice Kabir sitting with Justice A.K. Patnaik expressed inability to hear the matter due to the reason that appeals arising out of civil suits were not allocated to his bench as per the allotment norms “determined” by the Chief Justice of India.
“This case arises out of a civil suit. I can’t hear it. I don’t have the determination (allotment) to hear it,” Justice Kabir told Mr Tripathi’s counsel Mukul Rohtagi and advised him to approach the registry to get the case listed before another bench on Thursday.
As Mr Rohtagi said if the petition is not heard by Thursday, it would become infructous with the pronouncement scheduled for Friday, Justice Kabir said, “I would have no hesitation to hear it, if I had the determination (allotment of civil suits)”.
As Mr Rohtagi urged the bench to issue a direction to the registry for listing the case, Justice Kabir explained that he did not have the authority to issue such a direction as it could only be done by the CJI.
The suspense deepened with Tripathi “failing” to get the case listed before the registry by the closure of the court. His associate, advocate Sunil Jain said the case could not be listed but “every effort will be made to get it listed on Thursday morning”. The matter was mentioned before Justice Kabir, the number two in seniority as CJI S.H. Kapadia was sitting in the constitution bench. As per the top court rules when Justice Kapadia is in the constitution bench, he would not entertain any mentioning petition. Mr Tripathi moved the apex court after the high court bench of Justices S.U. Khan, Sudhir Agrawal and D.V. Sharma had rejected his plea last week for deferring the verdict by a two-to-one majority with Justice Sharma favouring the postponement and giving parties to the “title suit” a last chance to resolve the dispute with mutual negotiations.
However, the majority bench had taken serious view of Mr Tripathi’s attempt to get the verdict deferred after a date had been fixed for its pronouncement and imposed a fine of Rs 50,000 on him.