CJI says

Supreme Court. , Photo Credit: PTI

Chief Justice of India Sanjeev Khanna said on Monday (February 17, 2025) Listen to the petitions challenging the places of the worship act (Special Provisions) Act 1991, a law that has protected religious places since independence, can be pushed by March 2025.

The case pending for more than four years was heard on 17 February. However, the third judge on the bench, Justice KV Vishwanathan, was unavailable, as he was going to another bench of the apex court.

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Senior Advocate Indira Jaising appeared for one of the petitioners, mentioned orally in front of the two-judge bench combination of Chief Justice Khanna and Justice Sanjay Kumar.

“It cannot be taken today,” Chief Justice Khanna addressed Ms. Jayasing.

The CJI also commented that several petitions have been filed in the case. The CJI said, “We will take it up.”

Ms. Jayasing said that the court would have to frame the issues that are to be addressed in the case.

“This is to be done. We will see some time in March, ”the Chief Justice saw. The Center has not filed a counter-alone, expressing its views on the challenge to the validity of the 1991 Act.

SC asks for the limit to filing fresh arguments

Meanwhile, many minority organizations, political parties and eminent persons, senior advocates M Singhvi, P. Wilson, Raju Ramachandran and others represented a variety of different types, they have transferred to the Supreme Court, urging to protect places of worship.

He has argued that the 1991 law stood as a strong stronghold against the mushrooming suit, which eventually intended to pave the way towards retrograde and communal stresses. He highlighted that various local courts, by ordering surveys of the mosque complex in civil suits, were in direct violation of Section 3 of the Act, which banned the conversion and conversion of any place of worship, and the conversion of section 4, Which put a positive responsibility to maintain religious character. Every place of worship on August 15, 1947.

On December 12 last year, the top court was Civil courts stop from filing fresh suits Or passes the order among the pending people seeking to “claim” the temples destroyed by the Mughal “invaders” in the 16th century. In that hearing, Justice Vishwanathan indicated that Section 3 was an “effective expression or reunion of constitutional principles” and the suit could be objected to a violation of these basic constitutional principles even in the absence of the 1991 Act.

Recently, the Indian National Congress (INC) was through its general secretary KC Venugopal An intervention application filed in the case, Secularism was developed in India as a part of nationalism and freedom movement. Ink said that the Parliamentary Act “reflected the mandate of the Indian population”. The party said that the law extended the right to freedom of religion and was an established basic feature of the Constitution.

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Ink, quoted from the Ramjanambhoomi case decision of 2019, said, “Pava is related to the obligations of the secular state internal.”

Referring to these new interventions, the Chief Justice said that there should be a limit to filing.

The CJI said that the court called on whether the new interventions would be allowed to come for the next hearing.