Bengaluru: The topmost court in the country – Supreme Court – has, in one fell swoop, dismissed all review petitions in the Ayodhya case. Earlier this year, the top court had given the 2.77 acres of disputed land to the Hindus and 5 acres of land to the Muslims in Ayodhya itself. 

A 5-judge bench, headed by chief justice of India Arvind Bobde heard the review petitions in chambers (not in open court) and was of the firm view that there were “no grounds” for it to interfere and honour the review pleas. 

Interestingly, there was as many as 18 review pleas filed and all were struck down in one go. 

The decision to not review the pleas is nothing short of pathbreaking. It comes as a big slap on the face of lobbies who were dead against the apex court handing over the land to Hindus. 

What’s identical to the earlier order on the issue is that the decision not to review the pleas came unanimously. Earlier too, there was no mention of the name of any individual judge. 

What this also means is that the lobby working against the interests of Hindus to use legal red-tapism to inflict more insult of Hindus has failed badly. They have easily run out of options. 

Iqbal Ansari, a Babri litigant said, “I want to respect the court’s verdict.” 

Alok Kumar, working president of the VHP said, “I am very happy, there were no grounds for them to file a review petition. I knew it would be dismissed. Even they knew it would be dismissed. But they went on with it. Now that the court has given its order. They should help us construct Ram temple. They might go ahead and protest the SC ruling, but there is no use in it.” 

In its earlier order, the SC had asked the centre to set up a team to look into the construction of the Ram temple.