Sabarimala: SC says will frame questions relating to discrimination of women in religious places

 The Supreme Court Monday said it will frame the legal issues to be adjudicated by a 9-judge Constitution bench on religious discrimination against women at various religious places — the larger question which arose during the Sabarimala case.As the lawyers representing various parties in the case have not arrived at a consensus on framing larger issues to be deliberated upon by the Constitution bench, it will frame them by Thursday, the top court said.The Constitution bench, headed by Chief Justice S A Bobde, said it will inform the parties about the time frame for the hearing and would commence the proceedings by next week.The bench said that it would go by the reference order of November 14 last year, made by a five-judge bench which by a majority of 3:2 had said that the larger bench will have to evolve a judicial policy to do “substantial and complete justice” in matters of freedom of religion, such as entry of Muslim women into mosques and ‘dargah’ and Parsi women, married to non-Parsi men, being barred from the holy fire place of an Agyari.It took note of vehement opposition by some senior lawyers including F S Nariman, Kapil Sibal, Rajeev Dhavan, Rakesh Dwivedi and Shyam Divan that the apex court was wrong in making a reference of broad contours while deciding the review petition against the 2018 verdict, which allowed women of all age group to enter Kerala’s Sabarimala temple.The bench — also comprising justices R Banumathi, Ashok Bhushan, L Nageswara Rao, M M Shantanagoudar, S A Nazeer, R Subhash Reddy, B R Gavai and Surya Kant — said it would also deal with the legal issue raised by the lawyers whether a reference order can be made in review jurisdiction for a hearing by a larger bench.During the hearing, Nariman said that in review jurisdiction, there cannot be any reference order on issues to be heard by a larger bench as such a jurisdiction has a very limited scope.He said that exercising the limited jurisdiction of review, the bench headed by then Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi (since retired) had made the reference to a larger bench by listing out seven questions.”This is not practice which has been adopted by the Supreme Court since Privy Council days and there are several judgements to this effect,” the senior lawyer said.Senior advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing for All Indian Muslim Personal Board (AIMPLB), supported Nariman’s arguments. He said though the Board has said Muslim women are allowed to enter mosques for offering Namaz, the court should not enter into matter of faith and decide the essential religious practice while entertaining a PIL filed by a person not belonging to a particular faith. The bench said, “There is no point holding up everything for the sake of the issues.