As Former Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud's recent comments on the Ayodhya Ram Mandir-Babri Masjid dispute continue to make waves, Professor G Mohan Gopal suggested that the comments may be enough to warrant filing a curative petition before the Supreme Court of India against its 2019 verdict in the matter.
In 2019, a five-judge Constitution Bench comprising then CJI Ranjan Gogoi and Justices SA Bobde, DY Chandrachud, Ashok Bhushan and S Abdul Nazeer ruled that the Muslim parties had failed to prove uninterrupted possession of the disputed site and on the basis of balance of probabilities, ruled in favour of the Hindu parties to hand over the disputed site to them.
The judgment did not indicate who among the five judges had authored it though it is widely believed that Justice Chandrachud was the author.
However, though it had given the site to the Hindu parties, the judgment recorded that there was no evidence that the Babri Masjid was constructed on the site of a temple.
But in a recent interview to journalist Sreenivasan Jain, Justice Chandrachud said that the very erection of the Babri Masjid was an act of desecration of a prior temple.
This statement drew sharp reactions since it was not in tune with what was said in the judgment.
Clips of the interaction have since been widely shared on social media, drawing criticism.
Prof. Gopal opined that the former CJI's comments on the matter may be grounds enough to file a curative petition against the 2019 verdict.
"The ultimate responsibility of a court is to make decisions which are credible, in which people will have trust and confidence. Justice must be done and must be seen to be done and must be seen to be done especially by those who lose the case. In my personal opinuon, the Ayodhya judgment was wrongly decided. The question is now whether we should now file a curative petition in light of what Justice Chandrachud said. Maybe we should. Let us see what happens with that. I will be happy to work with you on that," he explained.
Prof. Gopal added that it would be a good opportunity to educate the public about such matters as well.
"Let us find out what he (Justice Chandrachud) said and let us work on a curative petition and demand that whole matter be reheard. It is vitiated now. This is the kind of reaction through which we can mould public opinion. Let us turn Justice Chandrachud's remarks into an opportunity to convince people of what really happened in that case and hopefully even approach the Court to get a rehearing of the whole case", he said.
He also criticised the judgment for being un-reasoned, especially pointing to the unsigned addendum to the judgment.
"There was no reasoned justification. It was very contrived. The addendum to the judgment was pure theocracy. And the addendum was unsigned. The judgment was very suspect", he said.
Prof. Gopal made this remark in response to a question posed to him by Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) Member of Parliament (MP) and lawyer Haris Beeran at the CH Mohammed Koya National Seminar at the University of Calicut, Kerala.
Beeran contended that Justice Chandrachud's comments in the interview stating that there was archeological evidence of desecration of a Hindu structure, when the judgment explicitly stated there wasn't, is akin to rubbing salt on the wounds of the Muslim community.
Beeran's question also touched upon Justice Chandrachud's remarks while on the Bench regarding the Places of Worship Act.
In 2022, during the hearing of another controversial case, the Gyanvapi-Kashi Vishwanath dispute, then CJI Chandrachud orally remarked that the Act, which seeks to protect the status of all religious structures as they stood on August 15, 1947, does not bar the ascertainment of the religious character of a place of worship. Beeran argued that this had led to hundreds of petitions being filed challenging existing structures and even to the violence at Sambhal which resulted in the deaths of several citizens.
To this, Prof. Gopal said that his advice to judges is to be open about their political ideology and to recuse themselves from cases that might be affected by it. He opined that Justice Chandrachud should have recused himself from the Ayodhya case.
"I would say to judges, please be transparent about your ideology when you are on the bench. We have judges with all kinds of ideology. That is inevitable. What we want from them is sincerity, honesty and transparency. If he (Justice Chandrachud) had said all this while he was on the bench, he could have then recused himself (from Ayodhya case) saying he could not make an objective decision on this as he believes that it was a desecration to build the Babri Masjid. Although there is absolutely no evidence that Babri Masjid was built on a broken temple, maybe there was something with centuries in between. We don't know. But if he believed this, he should have recused himself. Because ultimately, what we are raising is a question of integrity", he said.
He added that former Supreme Court judge Justice Indu Malhotra saying that the Communist government in Kerala has acquired control of Hindu temples, could be grounds to file a curative petition against the 2020 judgment of the Supreme Court in the Shree Padmanabhaswamy temple case. The judgment delivered by her and Justice UU Lalit ruled that the Travancore royal family has rights to maintain and manage the temple.
"We saw Justice Indu Malhotra tell a TV channel outside Padmanabha temple that the Communist government is taking over all these temples etc. But we know that the Padmanabha temple was handed over to the government by the High Court of Kerala and we all know that. She had no basis to say that. Maybe we should file a curative petition against that also," he said.