Sabarimala PIL papers should have been ‘thrown in dustbin’: Supreme Court

E-PaperSubscribeSubscribeEnjoy unlimited accessSubscribe Now! Get features like The Supreme Court on Tuesday questioned the very basis of the 2006 public interest litigation (PIL) that culminated in its landmark 2018 ruling allowing entry of women of all ages into Kerala’s Sabarimala temple, observing that the petition “ought not to have been entertained at all” and that the material on record should have been “thrown in the dustbin”. Supreme Court of India. (PTI)A nine-judge constitution bench led by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant, and comprising justices BV Nagarathna, MM Sundresh, Ahsanuddin Amanullah, Aravind Kumar, AG Masih, R Mahadevan, Prasanna B Varale and Joymalya Bagchi, made the observations while hearing a batch of matters arising from the Sabarimala review proceedings and connected questions on the scope of religious freedom. The court’s remarks came during submissions by senior counsel RP Gupta, appearing for the Indian Young Lawyers’ Association (IALA), which had filed the original petition challenging the exclusion of women of menstruating age from the hill shrine. Taking strong exception to the foundation of the PIL, the bench said that the court had entertained the petition on the basis of material that did not merit judicial consideration. “We entertained the PIL based on these kinds of documents, which should have been thrown in the dustbin outright,” the CJI remarked, referring to reliance on newspaper reports and unverified material. Justice Nagarathna was equally direct, stating that “rather than ensuring security to the petitioners, the court could have ensured that there was no need for a security threat at all by not entertaining this petition”. She was referencing a 2016 order by the court, which not only ensured security of the association officer-bearers, including its president Noushad Ali, but also said that the court would proceed with the matter even if the association wanted to withdraw its plea. Justice Sundresh added that the case reflected an “abuse of the process of law”. In a broader critique of the PIL jurisdiction, the bench cautioned that public interest litigation (PIL), once conceived as a tool to advance access to justice, was increasingly being misused. “Public interest litigation has now become private, publicity, paisa and political interest litigation,” observed justice Nagarathna, underlining the need for courts to remain vigilant against motivated or publicity-driven petitions. ‘Are you the chief priest of the country?’ The bench also questioned the locus and intent of the petitioners. “Why have you filed this PIL? Are you the chief priest of the country?” the CJI asked pointedly, while justice Nagarathna queried whether a lawyers’ body should be engaging in such issues instead of focussing on the welfare of the bar and young practitioners. During the exchange, Gupta defended the maintainability of the plea, arguing that religion has both personal and institutional dimensions, and that denial of entry into places of worship could amount to a violation of the fundamental right to practise religion under Articles 25 and 26. It was submitted that the right to worship includes access to public religious institutions, irrespective of one’s faith. The bench, however, expressed reservations about permitting individuals without faith in a particular deity to assert a right of entry. “The ones who have faith in the deity will perform all that is needed… someone who says they will break all norms cannot be encouraged,” remarked Justice Nagarathna, expressing the court’s concern over the limits of religious freedom claims. The ongoing Supreme Court proceedings in the reference originate from the court’s 2018 judgment in ‘Indian Young Lawyers Association vs State of Kerala’, where a five-judge bench, by a 4:1 majority, struck down the centuries-old practice barring women aged 10 to 50 from entering the Sabarimala Temple. The ruling triggered widespread protests and a series of review petitions. In 2019, while considering those review pleas, the court referred a set of broader constitutional questions to a larger bench without conclusively deciding the correctness of the 2018 judgment. These questions relate to the interplay between equality and religious freedom, the scope of the essential religious practices doctrine, and the extent to which courts can intervene in matters of faith. The present nine-judge bench is now examining these issues, with implications extending beyond Sabarimala to disputes involving entry of women into religious spaces across faiths, excommunication practices, and the regulation of religious customs.