The Centre’s request to the Supreme Court to allow it to return the “superfluous land” it had acquired around the disputed site in Ayodhya in 1993 is not innocuous; nor is it justified at this juncture. The court had ordered that the status quo be maintained on the entire extent of 67.7 acres acquired in the aftermath of the demolition of the Babri Masjid. Behind the apparently equitable argument that an extent of land not in dispute can be given back to its original owners is a barely concealed political motive. BJP leader Ram Madhav has said, “In view of the strong popular sentiment attached to the Ram Mandir, it is the least that the government could do.” The sense of anxiety among the supporters of the Mandir cause over the delay in the adjudicatory process is palpable; but it is also indicative of an unreasonable expectation that the government should somehow facilitate the construction of a Ram temple regardless of what the court’s decision is. It is to address this anxiety and mollify elements that are unhappy with the progress of the judicial process that the government wants the court to vacate its status quo order. It is a move fraught with the risk of reigniting communal passions at a time when the appeals against the Allahabad High Court’s verdict in the title suits have reached the final stage of adjudication before the Supreme Court. The Centre’s argument is that the Supreme Court, in Ismail Faruqui (1994) had itself said that once the objectives of the acquisition have been achieved, the superfluous area should revert to its owners. It has also contended that the status quo was required only till the disposal of the suits, which ended in 2010 when the Allahabad High Court decided them.
Is the issue really so simple? The court had noted that the adjacent area had been acquired so that the party that succeeds is not denied the fruits of its success by those in the adjacent areas through denial of access. It had said the status quo was required to avoid “reigniting communal passions detrimental to the spirit of communal harmony”. Further, the trial court’s decision in favour of a three-way partition of the land has not satisfied any of the parties, and the entire suit is once again open for adjudication. The time is hardly ripe for altering the status quo . Beyond all this, the idea of giving back 42 acres of land to the Ram Janmabhoomi Nyas, a trust dedicated to the cause of constructing a temple to Ram on the site where the demolished Babri Masjid stood, will be needlessly provocative. The trust had obtained its lease in 1992 in the run-up to the campaign to demolish the mosque, from the Kalyan Singh government, whose actions were demonstrably anti-secular. There is a case for reconsidering the lease, but nothing at all for this organisation to be given the opportunity to gather its resources in the vicinity of the disputed site.
