NEW DELHI: Well-known hotelier Keshav Suri , who runs the Lalit Group of hotels, approached the Supreme Court on Monday for decriminalising gay sex and to quash Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code which makes carnal intercourse a crime punishable with imprisonment of up to 10 years. The court agreed to hear his plea and issued notice to the Centre.Armed with recent verdicts of the apex court upholding the right of choice and right to privacy of citizens, the 33-year-old businessman, who claims to be in a committed relationship with a man, said the penal provision was discriminatory and there was no logic for declaring intercourse between two individuals of the same sex as against the order of nature.Senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi, appearing for Suri, contended that a person’s right to choice of sexual orientation was part of fundamental rights guaranteed by the Constitution and Section 377 should not be invoked in case of any intercourse between two consenting adults of same sex.“Persons from LGBTQ community are ridiculed in various spheres of life. Equal work opportunities and pay is not given to individuals who have chosen their sexual orientation which is called ‘different'.The petitioner himself has suffered mentally and been stigmatised on account of his sexual orientation at personal and professional fronts. He had to deal with non-acceptance of his fundamental and intrinsic choice that is his homosexuality with his family and thereafter even professionally questions were raised about his sexuality, which does not normally happen with heterosexual individuals,” the petition said.“In addition, the petitioner is constantly living under the fear of a false prosecution with Section 377 being on the statute book and the petitioner is unable to express his relationship and his right to choose his sexual partner without being worried. This is by no yardstick a life of dignity and respect,” it said.Agreeing to hear his plea, a bench of CJI Dipak Misra and Justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud sought response from the Centre within a week.The SC’s 2013 ruling had dealt a big blow to the LGBTQ community by overturning a 2009 judgment of the Delhi HC, which had decriminalised Section 377 of the IPC to legally permit consensual sexual relationships in private between adults of same sex.The SC, however, in January rekindled hope for members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) community by setting the stage for reconsideration of its verdict upholding criminalisation of consensual gay sex.In the unanimous verdict declaring right to privacy as part of right to life, a nine-judge bench of the apex court had in January said the the SC’s two-judge bench had erred in upsetting the high court verdict.India could take a lead out of the book of counties such as Ireland and Australia, which have voted in favour of allowing same-sex couples to marry.