New Delhi, Nov 14 (HS): Thursday was an action-packed day in the Supreme Court where a constitutional bench, headed by Chief Justice of India (CJI) Ranjan Gogoi, was scheduled to deliver verdicts in three important cases – the Sabarimala and Rafale review petitions, and criminal contempt plea filed against Congress leader Rahul Gandhi.
The Supreme Court today referred to a larger bench the petitions seeking review of the apex court’s 2018 judgment allowing entry of women between the ages of 10 and 50 into the Sabarimala temple. The seven-judge Supreme Court bench that will now adjudicate on the review petitions in the Sabarimala matter will also look into the issue of Muslim women’s entry to mosques, case on female genital mutilation in the Dawoodi Bohra community and access to temples for Parsi women.
The Supreme Court also rejected requests to review its clean chit to the government in the Rafale fighter jet deal with French firm Dassault Aviation, saying there was no need for a “roving inquiry” into the case.
In the Sabarimala case, reading out the judgment, the bench said that petitions had sought to revive the debate about what’s the religion and essential religious practices. Individual right to pray at temple cannot be superior to what is considered as religious by another sect is what petitions have argued, the apex court said.
By a majority verdict of 4:1, the apex court in September last year had lifted the ban preventing women and girls between the age of 10 and 50 from entering the Ayyappa shrine in Kerala, holding the centuries-old religious practice as illegal and unconstitutional.
In the Rafale case, on May 10, the Supreme Court had reserved the decision on the petitions, including one by former union ministers Yashwant Sinha and Arun Shourie, along with activist-lawyer Prashant Bhushan, seeking a re-examination of its findings that there was no occasion to doubt the decision-making process in the procurement of 36 Rafale fighter jets.
However, dismissing the review petitions in the Rafale case on the ground that “they are without any merit”, a bench comprising outgoing Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi, Justices SK Kaul and KM Joseph today said that we don’t feel it necessary to order an FIR (First Information Report) or a roving inquiry into the Rafale deal case.
Meanwhile, cautioning Congress leader Rahul Gandhi that he “needs to be more careful in future” for attributing to the court his remarks, the top court dismissed a contempt plea filed by BJP MP Meenakashi Lekhi against him for wrongly attributing to the court his “chowkidar chor hai” slogan against Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the Rafale case.
Gandhi had made the remarks on April 10, the day the court had dismissed the Centre’s preliminary objections over admissibility of certain documents for supporting the review petitions against the December 14 last year verdict in the Rafale case. A bench comprising Gogoi and Justices SK Kaul and KM Joseph had on May 10 reserved the judgement.
