Ayodhya case: Muslim parties apologise in Supreme Court for questioning 2003 ASI report
New Delhi: The Muslim parties on Thursday took a U-turn on questioning the authorship of the 2003 report of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) and apologised to the Supreme Court for wasting its time in the Ayodhya land dispute case.
A five-judge constitution bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi was told by senior advocate Rajeev Dhavan that they do not wish to question the authorship of the summary of the ASI report.
"It is not expected that every page is to be signed. The authorship of the report and the summary need not be questioned. If we had wasted my lords time, then we apologise for that. There is no point going into that.
"The report in question has an author and we are not questioning the authorship," Dhavan, representing the Muslim parties, said.
On Wednesday, senior advocate Meenakshi Arora, also representing the Muslim parties, questioned the ASI report saying every chapter is attributed to an author but the summary has not been attributed to anyone.
The bench also comprising Justices S A Bobde, DY Chandrachud, Ashok Bhushan and S Abdul Nazeer said that Dhavan in his opening remark has said that he has not forfeited his right to question the report but the evidences cannot be discredited after being accepted by the court.
At the outset, the bench asked both Hindu and Muslim parties to specify the time frame for completing the argument saying that there will not be any extra day after October 18.
"There will not be any extra day after October 18. It will be miraculous, if we deliver the judgement in four weeks in the matter," Chief Justice Gogoi said.
The court asked the Muslim parties to wrap up their arguments on the ASI report during the course of the day. It said there are holidays in October and only one advocate of the four Hindu parties will be allowed to give rejoinder arguments.
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Congress using hijab issue to pacify minority anger, alleges Karnataka LoP R Ashoka
Bengaluru: Leader of Opposition in the Assembly R. Ashoka has accused the Congress government of using the hijab issue to placate what he described as discontent among minority voters after the Davanagere by-election.
In a post on X on Wednesday, Ashoka alleged that the state government, instead of addressing issues such as price rise, corruption, farmers’ distress and law and order, was attempting to retain its minority vote base by reviving the hijab issue.
Referring to the 2022 dress code introduced by the BJP government, which prohibited hijab in schools and colleges, Ashoka said the Karnataka High Court had upheld the policy and emphasised the importance of discipline in educational institutions.
He questioned the Congress government’s move to revisit the issue and asked whether setting aside the court-backed policy to benefit one community could be described as secularism.
Ashoka further alleged that while the government was willing to permit hijab, it continued to prohibit saffron shawls.
He accused the government of dividing students on religious lines rather than treating schools and colleges as spaces of equality.
Drawing a comparison with Mamata Banerjee’s government in West Bengal, Ashoka claimed that excessive appeasement politics had harmed the state and warned that the Congress in Karnataka could face a similar political response.
He said voters in Karnataka would teach the Congress a lesson for what he termed “vote-bank politics” and for compromising constitutional and judicial principles.
