The Supreme Court on Monday refused to grant an urgent hearing to a public interest plea seeking the registration of FIRs against all those accused of sexual harassment as part of the #MeToo campaign across the country.

A bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi told the petitioner, advocate Manohar Lal Sharma, that the matter would come up in “normal course”.

Another advocate, Mahesh Kumar Tiwari, has filed a contrary petition urging the apex court not to allow the registration of FIRs on the basis of belated allegations, such as those that typify the #MeToo campaign.

Instead, Tiwari has pleaded that the court direct the strict enforcement of the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013, to deal with such offences.

Under this act, written complaints are lodged with an internal complaints committee at the workplace and handled discreetly at first.

Besides seeking FIRs on the basis of oral or social media statements by the #MeToo campaigners, Sharma has demanded fast-track courts to deal with these complaints in a time-bound manner.

He has urged the apex court to direct the National Commission for Women to set up a separate platform for the filing of complaints of sexual harassment, which should also form the basis for registration of FIRs.

Tiwari, however, has highlighted that many of the #MeToo allegations relate to incidents that allegedly occurred decades ago and “cannot be verified or testified judicially in absence of proper evidence”.

“It is very unsafe to punish the person against whom oral allegations were levelled and that too after unexplained and inordinate delay of several years,” he has said.

He has argued that such unverified allegations seriously erode the reputation of the accused, and expressed fear that accepting them at face value will open the door to vengeful or motivated accusations.

Instead, he has said, the apex court should issue a fresh direction to the authorities to strictly implement 2013 sexual harassment law and its guidelines in all departments, institutions, organisations, political parties and the like.

Internal complaint committees, as mandated by the act, should be set up immediately wherever they have not been constituted, he has said.

The #MeToo campaign has so far named several prominent people such as then junior foreign minister M.J. Akbar (who has resigned), film personalities Nana Patekar, Alok Nath and Sajid Khan, and author Chetan Bhagat.