A three-judge bench of the Supreme Court will hear the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid land dispute case at 2 pm on Friday.

On July 21, the top court had agreed to list the matter for hearing soon, based on a petition by Bharatiya Janata Party MP Subramanian Swamy. He had asked for an urgent listing of the case, highlighting that the main appeals against the Allahabad High Court have been pending for seven years in the Supreme Court.

On August 8, in a major development in the decades-old case, the Shia Waqf Board told the Supreme Court that a mosque can be built in a Muslim-dominated area at a reasonable distance from the disputed site. “If the Ram temple and mosque co-exist, it will lead to conflicts,” the board told the bench.

The Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid case

The row over the ownership of the 2.7 acres of the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid land has raged on for decades. On December 6, 1992, Hindu volunteers gathered at the site had demolished the mosque. The incident had triggered communal riots across the country.

In September 2010, the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court had divided the site where the mosque once stood into three – two parts for Hindus and the third for Muslims. All parties involved had challenged the decision in the Supreme Court.