SC dismisses plea against Ayodhya excavation

A vacation bench comprising Justice R C Lahoti and Justice Brijesh Kumar while refusing permission to Naved Yar Khan to file the appeal, said the petitioner could approach the Lucknow Bench of the high court and raise the issue.

The bench, after refusing permission to file special leave petition (SLP), dismissed the petition.

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Narrating the sequence of events from construction of the mosque, Khan stated that the order for excavation would prove to be a bad precedent as now anybody could demand for excavation of any religious site on the pretext that another religious structure pre-existed the present one.

The petitioner further stated that the order for excavation at the disputed site was clearly violative of the 1994 order of the Supreme Court which had categorically directed maintenance of status quo at the disputed site till the high court decided the rival petitions claiming ownership over the land.

The Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court had on March 5 directed the ASI to excavate the disputed site.

Meanwhile, a day after Kanchi Shankaracharya said that the Muslim religious leaders were prepared to hand over the disputed site in Ayodhya to Hindu religious heads, All India Muslim Personal Law Board said on Monday no such assurance had been given.

"No prominent Muslim organisation has given assurance that the land can be given for the construction of a temple. The statement given by Shankaracharya is not correct," Sayeed Qasim Rasool Ilyas, spokesperson of All India Muslim Personal Law Board, said in Hyderabad.

"There is no change in our stand that court verdict should be binding on all parties," Ilyas, who is here to participate in the three-day Jamaat-e-Islami Hind conference, said.