NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to take a call on whether to transfer to itself nearly two dozen petitions pending before various high courts, which are adjudicating challenges to provisions of state-enacted Religious Freedoms Acts banning religious conversion for marriage without prior permission of the authorities.
A bench of Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud and Justices P S Narasimha and J B Pardiwala saw a battery of combative senior advocates- Kapil Sibal, C U Singh, Indira Jaising, Dushyant Dave, Raju Ramachandran, Vrinda Grover, Huzefa Ahmadi and Sanjay Parekh- succeed in persuading the court to allow filing of a petition seeking transfer of 22 petitions on this issue pending before the HCs of Allahabad, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Himachal, Karnataka and Uttarakhand.
With difficulty, attorney general R Venkataramani could barely breach the decibel levels to suggest to the bench that “it would be appropriate to allow the HCs to adjudicate the pending petitions as they are better placed to scrutinise state laws”. The bench said it is only permitting Sibal’s client to file a petition seeking transfer of all similar petitions from the HCs to the SC. “We will hear you (the AG) before passing orders,” it assured.
But the CJI, as master of the roster, has already transferred to his bench a PIL which has been heard many times by a bench headed by Justice M R Shah.
Senior advocate P Wilson’s allegations against Upadhyay’s PIL as a BJP-driven agenda and objection to the repeated withdrawal of similar PILs earlier and their refiling by the same petitioner was ignored by Justice Shah’s bench, which had told the senior counsel not to politicise a legal issue. However, Wilson on Monday succeeded in submitting similar arguments before the CJI-led bench, which asked whether PIL petitioners have no regard for rules and procedures.
SC posted the matter for next hearing on January 30.
A bench of Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud and Justices P S Narasimha and J B Pardiwala saw a battery of combative senior advocates- Kapil Sibal, C U Singh, Indira Jaising, Dushyant Dave, Raju Ramachandran, Vrinda Grover, Huzefa Ahmadi and Sanjay Parekh- succeed in persuading the court to allow filing of a petition seeking transfer of 22 petitions on this issue pending before the HCs of Allahabad, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Himachal, Karnataka and Uttarakhand.
With difficulty, attorney general R Venkataramani could barely breach the decibel levels to suggest to the bench that “it would be appropriate to allow the HCs to adjudicate the pending petitions as they are better placed to scrutinise state laws”. The bench said it is only permitting Sibal’s client to file a petition seeking transfer of all similar petitions from the HCs to the SC. “We will hear you (the AG) before passing orders,” it assured.
But the CJI, as master of the roster, has already transferred to his bench a PIL which has been heard many times by a bench headed by Justice M R Shah.
Senior advocate P Wilson’s allegations against Upadhyay’s PIL as a BJP-driven agenda and objection to the repeated withdrawal of similar PILs earlier and their refiling by the same petitioner was ignored by Justice Shah’s bench, which had told the senior counsel not to politicise a legal issue. However, Wilson on Monday succeeded in submitting similar arguments before the CJI-led bench, which asked whether PIL petitioners have no regard for rules and procedures.
SC posted the matter for next hearing on January 30.