Sunni Waqf Board decides to challenge HC verdict

LUCKNOW: Efforts for an out of court settlement in Ayodhya title case suffered a setback when the UP Sunni Central Waqf Board (UPSCWB) on Tuesday decided to move the Supreme Court against the Allahabad high court's September 30 order. The board, which is main party in Suit No 4, had been awarded one-third of the disputed land by the high court.
However, the fact that statutory body does not entirely rule out the possibility of truce at a subsequent date comes as a big relief.The buck stops with the UPSCWB president, who has been authorised `to consider any proposal made by any party to the suit for out-of-court compromise and take an appropriate decision after due consultation with other members'.
The resolution to approach the Supreme Court was cleared unanimously by the 13-member committee in an emergency meeting convened on Tuesday. Talking to TOI, chairperson Zufar Ahmad Farooqui said that "the decision followed due deliberation over the September 30 order by the Lucknow bench of high court and legal advice received thereon".
Farooqui was also at pains to disassociate himself and the board with "certain people who who were talking about negotiating an out-of-court settlement or a compromise". "I am the only authorised person to do so," Farooqui clarified and added that all others had no locus standi. Significantly, the original plaintiff in the title suit Hashim Ansari had claimed that his peace parleys with Mahant Gyan Das, head of Akhil Bharatiya Akhara Parishad, had due sanction and approval of the UPSCWB. In response to a pointed query, Farooqui said that he had not broached any such subject with Ansari.
Meanwhile, the UPSCWB lawyer in high court, Zafaryab Jilani, said that the board would base its petition on a few specific points --main among them the legal acknowledgement of Hindu belief and faith by the verdict. "Hindus may believe that Lord Ram was born under the central dome but there is no evidence to support the point. The Indian law of evidence does not treat belief and faith as substantive piece of evidence and this could be a risky trend," he said.
This apart, the board may also question the ASI findings on the structure "Theirs was a vague report and nowhere did it mention that a temple was razed to raise a mosque. The high court's decision to treat the disputed site as joint possession, Jilani said, was also not acceptable to the board. Muslims, he claimed, had possession of the inner portion and also a partially of the outer area in disputed land.
Referring to Justice SU Khan's observation that no `wuju' (mandatory cleansing before offering of namaz) was performed at the site after 1885, Jilani said that he had photographic evidence to prove that Muslims were doing `wuzu' at the designated spot at the site till 1950. Moreover, the high court's decision maintaining that the suit was time-barred also was a major point the Board hoped to raise, he said and added that the appeal might be filed by the end of this month or by first week of November.