India’s top court to review ruling lifting ban on women entering Sabarimala temple

NEW DELHI: India’s top court on Tuesday agreed to review its ruling two months ago that removed a ban on women of menstruating age from entering a prominent Hindu temple in the southern state of Kerala, following widespread protests against the decision.

The Supreme Court will on Jan. 22 hear all 49 petitions seeking a review of its previous decision, a lawyer directly involved in the case told reporters.

Conservative Hindu groups had prevented women from entering the Sabarimala hill temple in Kerala state in recent weeks, clashing with police and damaging cars and buses. Their action was in defiance of the Supreme Court ruling that lifted a centuries-old ban on women or girls aged from 10 years to 50 from entering the temple.

In September, a five-judge bench of the top court had ruled the ban was illegal, saying it infringed the right to worship.

On September 28, a five-judge constitution bench headed by then Chief Justice Dipak Misra, in its 4:1 verdict, had paved the way for entry of women of all ages into the Sabarimala Temple saying the ban amounted to gender discrimination.

The top court had on October 9 declined an urgent hearing on the review plea filed by an association which had contended that the five-judge Constitution bench’s verdict lifting the ban was “absolutely untenable and irrational”.

A plea filed by the National Ayyappa Devotees Association (NADA), which has sought review of the verdict, had said,”The notion that the judgement under review is revolutionary, one which removes the stigma or the concept of dirt or pollution associated with menstruation, is unfounded.”

“It is a judgement welcomed by hypocrites who were aspiring for media headlines. On the merits of the case, as well, the said judgement is absolutely untenable and irrational, if not perverse,” it had said.

Besides the association, several other petitions, including one by the Nair Service Society (NSS), have been filed against the apex court verdict.

The NSS had said in the plea that as the deity is a ‘Naistika Brahmachari’, females below the age of 10 and after the age of 50 years are eligible to worship him and there is no practice of excluding worship by females.

— with inputs from PTI