Ram Mandir: Only One Judge of Historic Ayodhya Verdict to be Part of ‘Pran Pratishtha’ Ceremony

A unanimous decision by a Supreme Court bench led by then Chief Justice of India (CJI) Ranjan Gogoi, along with Justices S A Bobde, D Y Chandrachud, Ashok Bhushan, and S Abdul Nazeer in November 2019 settled the more than 150-year-old Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid land dispute. The verdict allowed the construction of the Ram Temple at the disputed site in Ayodhya. However, only one among them would attend the temple deity’s consecration ceremony.

Ex-CJIs Gogoi and Bobde, CJI D Y Chandrachud, and Justice Nazir would not be present at the ‘pran pratishtha’ ceremony on Monday for various reasons. Justice Bhushan has confirmed his attendance at the event.

Justice Gogoi, nominated as a Rajya Sabha member in 2020, is currently occupied with overseeing various charitable works, including orphanages and NGOs, initiated decades ago by his mother in Assam. He is also involved in monitoring welfare projects funded by his MPLAD fund in different constituencies.

For CJI Chandrachud, Monday is a working day at the Supreme Court, and in line with his ethos, he would not leave his judicial responsibilities to participate in a religious ceremony. Justice Bobde, leading a quiet retired life in his ancestral house at Nagpur, has not yet conveyed his participation status to the temple officials for the ‘pran pratistha’ ceremony, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to be the principal devotee.

Justice Nazeer, the lone Muslim judge on the Ayodhya bench, currently serves as the governor of Andhra Pradesh and has expressed his inability to attend the function due to prior commitments.

However, Justice Bhushan, appointed as the chairman of the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) on November 8, 2021, just over a month after his retirement as an SC judge, has affirmed that he will travel to Ayodhya on Sunday to participate in the “historic event.”

The five-judge bench, comprising then CJI Gogoi and Justices Bobde, Chandrachud, Bhushan, and Nazeer, delivered a unanimous 929-page verdict on November 9, 2019, granting the title of the disputed site in Ayodhya to the Hindu side. The court ruled that the Hindu side presented a stronger case based on evidence to legitimately claim the land. Notably, it was the first judgment of a Constitution bench of the Supreme Court without the author’s name.

Despite Justice Bhushan’s 116-page separate concurring opinion, then CJI Gogoi decided to maintain the unanimous nature of the verdict by referring to it as “addenda,” marking a unique occurrence in the history of the Supreme Court. The five-judge bench initiated the hearing on the Ayodhya land dispute on August 6, 2019, reserved its verdict on October 17, and delivered it after 23 days on November 9.