New Delhi, March 8 (IANS) The Supreme Court on Friday ordered mediation to settle the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid Ayodhya title dispute case by a three-member panel.
The members comprise two legal experts, both proponents of their field and a spiritual leader with a massive following. A brief look at the three who would be leading the mediation for the resolution of the case, which has been dragging on since 1992 and has kept the country on its toes with an anxious fervour.
Retired Judge Fakkir Mohamed Ibrahim Kalifulla: The Supreme Court retired judge, who has been appointed to head the mediation committee, began his legal career in 1975 with law firm T.S. Gopalan & Co. He rose through the ranks to become a judge at the apex court in 2012, when he was sworn in by the then Chief Justice S. H. Kapadia. The Tamil Nadu born judge was made Chief Justice of the Jammu and Kashmir High Court in 2011 after serving as acting Chief Justice for two months. Kalifulla retired from the profession in July 2016 .
Sriram Panchu: Panchu, also named to be a member of the committee, is a known and expert mediator who founded The Mediation Chambers in 2005. He is the president of the Association of Indian Mediators and a director on the board of the International Mediation Institute (IMI). He set up India's first court-annexed mediation centre in 2005.
Panchu was appointed by India's Supreme Court to mediate a 500-square kilometre dispute between the states of Assam and Nagaland, and another public dispute involving the Parsi community in Bombay.
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: He is the well known founder of the Art of Living Foundation. He was in the news for the wrong reasons when he took over the Yamuna floodplains for which the NGT fined him. The National Green Tribunal had held Sri Sri Ravi Shankar's Art of Living responsible for the damage to the Yamuna floodplains caused by the holding of the World Culture Festival in 2016. Earlier NGT imposed Rs 5 crore as interim environment compensation on the Art of Living Foundation for the event's impact on the environment. It had held that if the amount required for the restoration was above Rs 5 crore, then the urban body had to recover the money from the organisation.
In the last couple of years, the spiritual leader has emerged as a dispute mediator.
In the past, Sri Sri has also offered mediation over the Kashmir issue. He has met Kashmiri separatist leader Mirwaiz Umar Farooq at his residence in Srinagar, where the two had a discussion on the prevailing situation in the Valley.
He met Muzaffar Wani, father of Burhan Wani, the 22-year-old poster boy of militant organization Hizbul Mujahideen, who was shot by the Army in July 2016.
Sri Sri has also held discussions with United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) chief Paresh Barua to come to peace talks with the government.
In 2015, he is said to have held talks with Columbian rebel group FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia—People's Army). He had even visited Iraq in 2008 and 2014, with the Art of Living Foundation airdropping aid for nearly 5,000 Iraq war victims.
He is believed to have met Yazidi leaders, who were fighting the ISIS, in Iraq.
-- IANS
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