New Delhi: The decades-old Ayodhya temple-mosque dispute has been referred to a three-member panel of mediators who
have eight weeks to speak to all stake-holders for a solution, the Supreme Court said on Friday. A former Supreme Court judge, FM Ibrahim Kalifulla, spiritual guru Sri Sri Ravi Shankar and a senior advocate, Sriram Panchu, will be
in the mediation team that will carry out its task confidentially, without any media reporting, said a five-judge
constitution bench headed by Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi.
The in-camera sessions will be held in Faizabad, the neighbouring town of Ayodhya. The court opted for mediation despite objections from petitioners including the Uttar Pradesh government. The case was about “mind, heart and healing” and not land, the court had said earlier this week.
“Mediation will take place. We don’t see any legal obstruction to it,” said Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi while
delivering the order on India’s most politically sensitive dispute at a time political parties are in election mode.
The mediation team will be led by Justice (Retired) FM Ibrahim Kalifulla. The panel members are free to include more members in the committee, the court said. The mediators will begin their discussions with the petitioners in
Faizabad from next Friday. They have to submit a status report in four weeks.
The top court, which has been advocating negotiations for two years, received the feedback of the petitioners during a hearing on Wednesday. Barring the Sunni Waqf Board and the Nirmohi Akhara, one of the Hindu petitioners, all were against mediation.
The Hindu groups had argued that a solution through mediation will not be accepted by a majority of the community.
The court said it was not appropriate to pre-judge that mediation would fail and people would not agree with the
decision.
Justice DY Chandrachud, who was part of the bench, however, said it would be very difficult to bind millions of
people by way of mediation, considering it is not just a property dispute between parties but one involving two
communities.
