New Delhi, Jan 9 In a big setback to the petitioners demanding marriage equality rights in India, a 5-judge bench of the Supreme Court on Thursday rejected the batch of pleas seeking review of its October 2023 verdict, which had refused to grant any legal recognition to same-sex and queer couples in the country.
Apart from dismissing the application for listing review pleas in open court, a bench of Justices B.R. Gavai, Surya Kant, B.V. Nagarathna, P.S. Narasimha, and Dipankar Datta said that they did not find any error apparent on the face of the record.
“We do not find any error apparent on the face of the record. We further find that the view expressed in both the judgments (constituting the majority view) is in accordance with law and as such, no interference is warranted. Accordingly, the review petitions are dismissed,” ordered the Justice Gavai-led Bench.
The review petition, filed under Article 137 of the Constitution against the decision rendered on October 17, 2023, argued that the impugned judgment is "self-contradictory and manifestly unjust".
The majority judgment is facially erroneous because it finds that the government is violating the petitioners' fundamental rights through discrimination and yet fails to enjoin the discrimination, it contended.
Ordinarily, review petitions are tested on very narrow grounds like mistakes of law, errors apparent on the face of the record, etc, and are often dismissed in chambers and are rarely given open court hearings.
In its verdict delivered on October 17, 2023, a 5-judge bench headed by then CJI D.Y. Chandrachud had declined to strike down or read into gender-neutral "person" in place of "male" and "female" existing under the Special Marriage Act and had left it to the legislature to take a call on enacting the marriage equality law.
All five judges of the Constitution Bench had unanimously agreed that there exists no unqualified right to marriage and accepted the Centre’s proposal that a committee to be headed by the Cabinet Secretary be set up to examine what administrative steps could be taken to address basic social benefit concerns relating to same-sex couples. However, it had asked the Union and state governments to ensure that the LGBTQ+ community is not discriminated against on the basis of their sexual orientation and queer individuals are not refused access to any goods or services.
In July last year, Justice Sanjiv Khanna (the incumbent CJI) recused himself from hearing the review petitions and suggested circulating the review pleas before an appropriate Bench.
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