It would have been appropriate to have it examined by a larger bench. Article 145(3) of the Constitution requires a minimum of five judges for cases involving a substantial question of law or the interpretation of the Constitution. Instead of agreeing to hear the petitions, CJI could well have refused to entertain the requests.

The order of Justice Chandrachud to reopen the Gyanvapi mosque case has forced the CJI Sanjiv Khanna to have a look at the P W Act. Chandrachud’s action is certainly questionable as he ordered for opening of the case disregarding the protection of Religious Places of Worship Act, 1991, which prohibits reopening of such cases on the dubious ground that Hindus were not seeking to change the character of Gyanvapi mosque only to determine its religious character.

Chandrachud should have realized the possibility of his order being misused, as is happening now. True enough his order has come handy for the Hindu bigots to create social and religious animosity. They have been using his order to rake up the disputes in Varanasi, Mathura and many other places. They have virtually been empowered to stake claim on any mosque of being built on mandirs.

On an earlier occasion, Chandrachud had told a gathering of lawyers after visiting the Dwarka temple in Gujarat that the saffron dhwaj (flag) on the temple stands for the flag of justice. It is beyond comprehension how could he make such remark. Modi’s ten year rule has seen spread of Hindutva in the higher judiciary and the legal fraternity. A judge of the Calcutta High Court, on the day of his retirement, revealed his lifelong association with the RSS. Another judge of Calcutta High Court, Abhijit Gangopadhyay, resigned a few weeks before the Lok Sabha election, within a few days became a BJP candidate and was elected to the Lok Sabha.

Only on last Sunday, December 1, Justice Shekhar Kumar Yadav of Allahabad High attended a meeting of the legal cell of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and delivered a lecture on the Uniform Civil Code (UCC). He said; “The UCC defines the laws in the context of marriage, inheritance, divorce and adoption in any religious community”. At the meet the VHP leader went up to alleging that Bangladesh had become a “second Kashmir”. The meet called upon Hindus to unite for protecting identity. He is known in the legal fraternity for his communal leaning.

Obviously, what could a victim from the minority community, who approaches the higher judiciary for justice, expect from him. In yet another case, a two-member bench of the Madhya Pradesh High Court in July had come out with the suggestion that to serve the country one must join the RSS. Modi is for appointing lawyers who are close to RSS as the judges of High Courts.

Months after the Ayodhya verdict, petitions were filed in SC challenging validity of the law on grounds of being "arbitrary and unreasonable and infringing the fundamental right to practice religion". The petitioners included BJP's Ashwini Upadhyay, Subramanian Swamy and other Hindu organisations seeking to open litigation routes for ownership claims over disputed sites like those at Kashi and Mathura. In all fairness the judges should have rejected the pleas. But ironically instead of refusing to entertain they accepted them, which has been primarily responsible for the present situation.

Coming out with the demand to demolish the masjids is unstoppable. This will go on. The hardcore Hindutva forces would continue to file petitions before the police and court and they in turn would order demolition of these mosques, to resurrect the Hindu gods who were buried by the Mughal rulers. This action is part of a well designed conspiracy to terrorise Muslims and be subservient to them. The modus operandi is quite simple. A VHP or Bajrang Dal cadre or a person claiming to be Hindu will file a complaint. Next day the babus of ASI would confirm the existence of Hindu idol and on the third day the court order for demolition by the police.

It was a court order for survey of Sambhal’s Jama Masjid to ascertain whether it was built over a demolished temple that triggered violence in which five persons were shot dead by the police. A mob accompanying the survey commission was chanting “Jai Shri Ram” at the gate of the Jama Masjid in the presence of the district magistrate and the superintendent of police. Recently, a local court issued notices on a petition from a Delhi-based activist claiming that the 13th-century Ajmer Sharif dargah, a shrine to Sufi saint Khwaja Moin-ud-din Chishti, stands over the ruins of a Shiva temple.

In Sambhal, the local court had ordered the survey on the day the petition was moved, November 19, and the court-appointed surveyors visited the mosque the same afternoon accompanied by district magistrate Rajendra Pensiya and superintendent of police Krishna Kumar. It is indeed mysterious that a local court ordered a survey on the 12th-century dargah of the Sufi saint Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti — one of the most sacred Sufi sites in Asia not just for Muslims but for all Indians who are proud of our pluralist traditions. The most astonishing has been the petition was based on the research carried out by the petitioner. The court instead of seeking to know his research credentials accepted his submission as truth. The judicial quotient of the judge could be understood from the simple fact that he did not want to confirm the authenticity of the so called research.

Justice B.G. Kolse Patil, a retired judge of Bombay High Court accused justice Chandrachud of intellectual dishonesty; “I had opposed the Babri judgment because although people thought the matter was finished, that had indeed opened a Pandora’s box…. Justice D.Y. Chandrachud’s intellectual dishonesty was seen in his judgment (in the Gyanvapi) case against the 1991 law.” If Chandrachud had stuck to the Supreme Court’s judgment in relation to the Places of Worship Act, 1991 this nature of political uncertainty and threat of communal backlash should not have arisen.

In this connection observation of senior advocate Sanjay Hedge is quite significant: “The suits in Sambhal and Ajmer ought to have been dismissed at the threshold as being barred under the (1991) Act. However, because of an oral observation by Justice (retired) D.Y. Chandrachud in the Gyanvapi matter, it is thought that the Act, while preventing change of character, does not preclude an inquiry into the nature of that character on August 15, 1947. I think it is frivolous and vexatious to entertain litigation where no ultimate relief can be given.” (IPA Service)