One of the plaintiffs in the Ramjanambhoomi-Babri Masjid title dispute case, Gopal Singh Visharad on Monday approached the apex court asking for an early hearing into the matter.

A three-judge bench of the Supreme Court headed by CJI Ranjan Gogoi told Visharad to file a necessary application for considering the case to be heard by it.

The Supreme Court on February 26 had deferred for another six weeks its decision on when to commence regular hearing in the case. However, in a surprise development, the five-judge constitution bench had also wondered if the dispute should be sent in for mediation one last time, by invoking Section 89 of the Code of Civil Procedure (CCP).

The Constitution Bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and comprising Justices SA Bobde, DY Chandrachud, Ashok Bhushan and S Abdul Nazeer had handed over over copies of a report filed by the apex court’s secretary general and co-signed by four of its registrars detailing the status of documents, translations and records in the case.

CJI Gogoi had informed counsels for all parties in the case that nearly 38000 pages of documents originally written in five different languages – English, Hindi, Urdu, Sanskrit and Gurmukhi – had to be translated. It may be recalled that during an earlier hearing of the case, on January 10, the Chief Justice had directed the Supreme Court registry to appoint official translators for the documents and also assess how much time it would take to complete the process of translations.

—India Legal Bureau