The Indian government urged the Supreme Court on Thursday to lift a ban on Hindu religious activity on land surrounding the site of a 16th-century mosque that Hindus destroyed in northern India.
The Babri Mosque was demolished brick-by-brick by a Hindu mob in 1992, leading to religious rioting across the country that left more than 2,000 people dead.
Last year, the court banned religious activity in the area to prevent fighting.
Hindu nationalists and religious groups want the land around the site to be handed over to them so they can perform rites and build a temple to the god Rama.
Muslim groups say that would cut off access to the area, making it impossible to rebuild the mosque.
The government approached the court last month after Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee met a top Hindu cleric and discussed steps to resolve the dispute over the site in Ayodhya, a city 550 kilometers (345 miles) southeast of New Delhi.
Both Hindus and Muslims claim the site of the destroyed mosque and consider it holy. Hindus say it is the birthplace of Rama, their chief god.
On Thursday, Kirit Rawal, the government solicitor-general, argued that the site where the mosque stood consists of only 2.67 acres (1.08 hectares) and the court could consider allowing Hindu religious activity in the 67 acres (27 hectares) around it.
A previous government had acquired that land from the Ram Janambhoomi Trust (Ram Birthplace Trust), an umbrella group of Hindu hard-liners, to prevent any building that would disturb the status quo until the courts decide who has the rights to the site where the mosque stood.
That title dispute is pending before another court the High Court of Allahabad in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, which on Wednesday ordered an excavation to determine whether a Hindu temple had once existed there. It gave the state-run Archaeological Survey of India four weeks to report its findings.
The excavation order came after reports that radar mapping by a private survey company had suggested the presence of some structure underneath. Some archaeologists have noted that during India's thousands of years of history, most major structures are built atop earlier ones.