The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear a batch of pleas seeking legal validation for same-sex marriages on Monday.
According to Monday’s (March 13) cause list uploaded on the top court’s website, the pleas are listed for hearing before a bench comprising Chief Justice DY Chandrachud and justices PS Narasimha and JB Pardiwala.
The top court had, on January 6, clubbed and transferred to itself all such petitions pending before different high courts, including the Delhi High Court.
On December 14 last year, the top court had sought the Centre’s response to two pleas seeking a transfer of the petitions pending in the Delhi High Court for directions to recognise same-sex marriages to itself.
Prior to that, on November 25 last year, the top court had sought the Centre’s response to separate pleas moved by two gay couples seeking enforcement of their right to marry and a direction to the authorities concerned to register their marriages under the Special Marriage Act.
The top court’s five-judge Constitution bench, in a path-breaking unanimous verdict delivered on September 6, 2018, held that consensual sex among adult homosexuals or heterosexuals in a private space is not a crime while striking down a part of the British-era penal law that criminalised it on the ground that it violated the constitutional right to equality and dignity.
The top court, in its 2018 judgment, held that section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) that criminalised consensual gay sex was “irrational, indefensible and manifestly arbitrary”.
It had said the 158-year-old law had become an “odious weapon” to harass the LGBT community by subjecting its members to discrimination and unequal treatment.
