Satya Prakash
New Delhi, January 6
The Supreme Court on Friday transferred to itself all petitions seeking legal recognition to same-sex marriages pending in several high courts across India.
“Since several petitions are pending before Delhi, Kerala and Gujarat high courts on the same question, we are of the view that they should be transferred and decided by this court. We direct that all writ petitions shall stand transferred to this court,” a three-judge Bench led by Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud said.
Can appear virtually
To obviate any difficulty to a petitioner who cannot engage a counsel or travel to Delhi, all petitioners are provided the liberty to appear on virtual platforms and advance their submissions. —SC Bench
Asking the Centre to file a consolidated response to the petitions in six weeks, the top court posted the matter for further directions on March 13, when all petitions would be taken up together.
The Bench — which also included Justice PS Narasimha and Justice JB Pardiwala — asked the petitioners to file a common set of written submissions. Similarly, one set will be filed by the respondent i.e the Centre, it added.
The Bench nominated advocates Arundhati Katju and Kanu Agrawal as nodal counsel for the petitioners and the Centre, respectively.
“To obviate any difficulty to a petitioner who cannot engage a counsel or travel to Delhi, all petitioners are provided liberty to appear on virtual platforms and advance their submissions. Link to be provided to any who asks for the same,” the top court ordered.
The petitioners were represented by a battery of senior advocates, including Mukul Rohatgi, Neeraj Kishan Kaul, Anand Grover and others while Solicitor General Tushar Mehta appeared for the Centre.
The petitions have come more than four years after a five-judge Constitution Bench de-criminalised consensual homosexuals acts in private by reading down the 158-year-old colonial law under Section 377 of the IPC which criminalised such acts as “unnatural sex”.
The Supreme Court had, on December 14, 2022, issued a notice to the government on a petition by a same-sex couple married in the US seeking legal recognition of their marriage in India.
The petitioners, an Indian and a US citizen who got married in the US in 2010 and registered their marriage over there, complained that the Indian authorities were not registering their marriage under the Foreign Marriage Act, 1969.
PIL for relief to assault victims
The SC on Friday issued notices to the Centre and state legal services authorities of four states on a PIL alleging violation of its order to provide compensation to survivors of sexual crimes as per the NALSA’s 2018 Compensation Scheme and also mandated under Section 357A, CrPC
