NEW DELHI: A nine-judge bench led by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant Wednesday cited caseload to ask if it is prudent for the court to spend enormous time to resolve religious right disputes. The poser came during the course of hearings on the challenge to the Supreme Court’s verdict allowing women of menstruating age to enter the Sabarimala shrine and when senior advocate Darius Khambata, appearing for Parsi woman Goolrokh M Gupta, argued that individual fundamental right to freedom of conscience and to practise, profess and propagate religion can’t be annihilated by a denomination’s diktat to excommunicate her upon marriage to a non-Parsi man as she is deemed to have embraced her husband’s religion. There are almost 93,000 cases pending with the Supreme Court at present. The bench of CJI Kant and Justices B V Nagarathna, M M Sundresh, Ahsanuddin Amanullah, Aravind Kumar, A G Masih, Prasanna B Varale, R Mahadevan and Joymalya Bagchi — hearing the ‘faith vs fundamental right’ debate — asked whether an inter-faith marriage under the Special Marriage Act can be classified as a religious activity. Justice Nagarathna said under Hindu customs, marriage is sacrament, in Islam, it is a contract, while under the Special Marriage Act, it is a statutory marriage, and asked if anyone is aggrieved by violation of her or his rights because of marriage, would it not be prudent to approach a civil court seeking protection of the right. Khambata said that if it is a purely religious matter, the disputing parties need not approach SC, but a woman who loses her right to enter a religious place because of her marriage can approach a constitutional court for redressal. Justice Sundresh said, “You are asking us to enter an arena where we must decide competing rights of two individuals or individual vs denomination, that is the group of followers’ rights. How does it fall within the purview of judicial scrutiny by constitutional courts? We have thousands of cases pending. Should we not devote time to that? Competing rights and claims can be decided through civil suits.” As on Wednesday, there are 92,926 cases pending in SC— 72,386 civil and 20,540 criminal cases. Of these, 36,936 cases are less than one-year-old. This year, 27,736 cases have been filed in SC, and the court has disposed of 26,662 cases.
