Protesters against Section 377, which criminalises gay sex

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court ( SC ) on Tuesday reserved its verdict on whether to decriminalise Section 377 a controversial and archaic provision in the Indian Penal Code (IPC) that makes gay sex a punishable offence.

The SC asked all the counsel who argued for and against 377 to submit written submissions by this Friday.

A Constitution bench comprising Chief Justice of India (CI) Dipak Misra and Justices R F Nariman, A M Khanwilkar, D Y Chandrachud and Indu Malhotra, decided to reserve its verdict last Thursday as well, and agreed to hear the interveners for 90 minutes today, that is Tuesday. It heard them for longer than 90 minutes.

This, after advocate Manoj George - representing churches- which want gay sex to remain a crime - protested that the SC was rushing through arguments after patiently heard counsel after counsel for the LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer) community

The Centre last Wednesday put the onus of deciding the fate of Section 377 on the Supreme Court. And the SC, on its part, gave a strong indication it plans to go ahead and scrap the Section that criminalises homosexuality.

A day after that, on Thursday, the apex court rejected a demand for a referendum over the constitutional validity of section 377 of the IPC, saying it would not go by majority opinion but be governed by constitutional morality.

The top court said the social stigma and discrimination attached to the community would go if criminality of consensual gay sex is done away with, even as it maintained that it would scrutinise the legal validity of section 377 of the IPC in all its aspects.

In 2009, the Delhi high court ruled in favour of decriminalising Section 377, only to be reversed by a two-judge SC bench in 2013 in the Suresh Kumar Koushal vs Naz Foundation case.

In May, the apex court decided to hear the plea filed by Indian Institute of Technology's LGBT alumni association seeking scrapping of Section 377 of the IPC. Earlier, on April 27, Ashok Rao Kavi of Humsafar Trust and Arif Jaffar also filed petitions against Section 377.

These two pleas came just six days after hotelier Keshav Suri, filed a plea in this regard in the top court. In response to Suri's plea, the apex court on April 23 sought the Centre's reply on the plea seeking scrapping of Section 377. The centre replied on July 11, preferring to leave the decision to the ''wisdom of the court''.

