The Supreme Court on Thursday reserved its verdict on whether it would confine its hearing to a batch of review petitions supporting a ban on young women devotees from entering Kerala’s Sabarimala temple or expand the scope to cover similar discriminatory practices in other religions too.
The nine-judge bench headed by Chief Justice S.A. Bobde, which heard arguments from 10.30am to 4pm, said it would pronounce its verdict on Monday.
Senior advocates such as Fali Nariman, Shyam Divan and Indira Jaising and others insisted that the bench confine the hearing to the case related to Sabarimala, where women between 10 and 50 years had been banned for over a century.
A five-judge bench had in September 2018 struck down the practice as constitutional, prompting the review petitions.
Solicitor-general Tushar Mehta, assisting the court in the matter, and senior advocate Abhishek Singhvi, however, said the court must also examine the discriminatory practices in other faiths.
These practices relate to restrictions on the entry of Muslim women into mosques and dargahs; female genital mutilation among the Dawoodi Bohra community, and a ban on Parsi women, who are married to a non-Parsi, from entering the holy fire temples of Zoroastrianism.