Same-sex marriage verdict: SC to consider review pleas on July 10
Challenging the ruling, the review petitions said it “suffers from errors apparent on the face of the record and is self-contradictory and manifestly unjust”.
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The majority judgment, the petitioners contended, “appeared to be erroneous because it finds that the Respondents (authorities ) are violating the Petitioners’ fundamental rights through discrimination, and yet fails to enjoin the discrimination”. (PTI)A five-judge bench of the Supreme Court will on July 10 consider the petitions seeking review of the top court’s October 2023 judgment refusing to grant legal recognition for same-sex marriages.
The October ruling was delivered by a bench comprising Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud and Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul, S Ravindra Bhat, Hima Kohli and P S Narasimha.
Justices Kaul and Bhat have since retired and will be replaced by Justices Sanjiv Khanna and B Nagarathna in the bench that will consider the review petitions on July 10 in chambers.
In a ruling that disappointed LGBTQ+ activists, the 5-judge bench, in four separate judgments on October 7, 2023, declined to strike down or tweak provisions of the Special Marriage Act, 1954 (SMA), saying there was “no unqualified right” to marriage and a same-sex couple cannot claim it as a Fundamental Right under the Constitution. It left it to the Parliament to change the law for such a union.
While the CJI and Justice Kaul were in favour of recognising the right of same-sex couples to enter into a civil union, Justices Bhat, Kohli and Narasimha differed.
Challenging the ruling, the review petitions said it “suffers from errors apparent on the face of the record and is self-contradictory and manifestly unjust”.
The majority judgment, the petitioners contended, “appeared to be erroneous because it finds that the Respondents (authorities ) are violating the Petitioners’ fundamental rights through discrimination, and yet fails to enjoin the discrimination”.
“For example, the majority judgment holds that the Respondents’ characterisation of ‘marriage for various collateral and intersectional purposes as a permanent and binding legal relationship . .. between heterosexual couples only (and no others) impacts queer couples adversely’, and ‘has an adverse discriminatory impact’ by wrongly depriving them of marriage-related benefits,” said a petition.
It added that the ruling “recognises that while heterosexual relationships have ‘the benefit of the cover of the law’ which ‘afford(s) protection, and extend(s) benefits’”, the same “eludes those living in non-heterosexual unions” and “the impact, therefore, is discriminatory”.
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