A constitution bench of the Supreme Court will today consider the review petitions against the Court’s verdict on Sabarimala Woman entry.
The Review Bench comprises Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi, Justices Rohinton F. Nariman, A.M. Khanwilkar, D.Y. Chandrachud and Indu Malhotra. Malhotra had given the sole dissenting opinion against the entry of women aged between 10 and 50.
The Bench has to decide 49 separate review petitions challenging the September 28 judgment. They have been filed by several organisations, to the chief priest of the temple to several individuals. The Bench would be deciding the petitions in chambers at 3 p.m. and not in the open court.
However, a three-judge Bench led by Chief Justice Gogoi would in the morning be hearing three separate writ petitions, also challenging the Sabarimala judgment. Violence and protests had followed the majority judgment by a Constitution Bench. The court had earlier declined to stay the judgment.
The petitions have argued that ‘reform’ does not mean rendering a religious practice out of existence on the basis of a PIL filed by “third parties” who do not believe in the Sabarimala deity.
A Constitution Bench of the apex court, in a majority of 4:1, had upheld the 12- year old PIL filed by Indian Young Lawyers Association challenging the prohibition on women aged between 10 and 50 from undertaking the pilgrimage to Sabarimala temple.
The Bench found that a restriction on women solely based on her menstrual status was a smear on her individual dignity. It was like “treating women as the children of a lesser God is to blink at the Constitution”. It was a “form of untouchability” abolished decades ago. The ban on women was derogatory to equal citizenship. The right to practice religion should yield to the right of the dignity of women aged between 10 and 50.
The top court had on October 9 declined an urgent hearing on the review plea filed by an association which had contended that the five-judge Constitution bench’s verdict lifting the ban was “absolutely untenable and irrational”. Later, the court had said that it would consider the review pleas on November 13.
A plea filed by National Ayyappa Devotees Association, which has sought review of the verdict, had said that “the notion that the judgment under review is revolutionary, one which removes the stigma or the concept of dirt or pollution associated with menstruation is unfounded. It is a judgment welcomed by hypocrites who were aspiring for media headlines. On the merits of the case, as well, the said judgment is absolutely untenable and irrational, if not perverse”.
Besides the association, several other petitions including one by Nair Service Society, have been filed against the apex court verdict. The NSS had said in the plea that as the deity is a ‘Naishtika Brahmachari’, females below the age of 10 and after the age of 50 years are eligible to worship him and there is no practice of excluding worship by females.
“Hence, the delay or wait for 40 years to worship cannot be considered as exclusionary and it is an error of law on the face of the judgment,” the plea had said.
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