Section 377: SC questions Centres neutral stand

The Supreme Court last Thursday had commented that the central governments position in the case was a mockery of the appeal proceedings before it.

The government has said it neither wants to defend the provision of Section 377 IPC nor disagree with it.

In short,it does not want to take a position on the High Court judgement,and has left it to the SC to take a final view.

It is a new phenomenon. That the government has a neutral stand, the Bench of Justices GS Singhvi and S.J. Mukhopadhyay observed.

The court made this remark when the lawyer for the All India Muslim Personal Law Board,Husseifa Ahmadi,said the government cannot bunk its constitutional obligation to defend its laws.

It has to take a position one way or the other,Ahmadi said.

Besides,in the past two hearings,the central government has shuttled incessantly between keeping clear off any controversy by maintaining a neutral stand on homosexuality,but at the same time calling same-sex behaviour an unnatural offence and various health risk associated with the HIV infection.

The Bench of Justices GS Singhvi and SJ Mukhopadhyay is hearing a bunch of appeals filed by anti-gay groups against the Delhi High Court on July 6,2009 to exempt consensual homosexual acts in private between adults from the ambit of Section 377 IPC,a penal provision which dealt with unnatural offences.

On February 23,Additional Solicitor General P.P. Malhotra literally read out from his High Court brief for three hours that homosexuality is indeed an unnatural offence even as a rattled ministry denied its lawyers version,saying its position has changed to neutral after the 2009 judgment.

On February 28,Additional Solicitor General Mohan Jain first quoted a Group of Ministers recommendation to stay away from litigation in the SC on gay sex case,only to later make submissions about how homosexuality is associated with HIV infection.