Delhi High Court to hear pleas over recognition of same-sex marriages on November 30

The Delhi High Court has listed for final hearing separate pleas including by two samesex couples seeking a declaration recognising samesex marriages under the special Hindu and foreign marriage lawsA bench of Chief Justice DN Patel and Justice Jyoti Singh granted time to the parties for filing replies and rejoinders in the matter and listed it for final hearing on November 30In the first petition Abhijit Iyer Mitra and three others have contended that samesex marriages are not possible despite the Supreme Courts decriminalising consensual homosexual acts and sought a declaration to recognise them under the Hindu Marriage Act HMA and Special Marriage Act SMA The two other pleas are one filed by two women seeking to get married under the SMA and challenging provisions of the statute to the extent that it does not provide for samesex marriages and the other filed by two men who got married in the US but were denied registration of their marriage under the Foreign Marriage Act FMAAnother petition seeks to allow a foreignorigin spouse of an Overseas Citizen of India cardholder to apply for OCI registration regardless of gender or sexual orientation The petitioners are a married samesex couple Joydeep Sengupta an OCI and Russell Blaine Stephens a US citizen and Mario Dpenha an Indian citizen and a queer rights academic and activist pursuing a PhD at Rutgers University USADuring the hearing advocate Karuna Nandy appearing for the couple said they got married in New York and the law applicable in their case are the Citizenship Act the FMA and the SMA She further submitted that the Citizenship Act is silent on gender and sexuality of the spouse and it provides that a person married to an overseas citizen of India whose marriage is registered and subsisting for two years should be declared eligible to apply as a spouse for an OCI cardNandy pointed out that the government has not yet filed a reply to her petition Solicitor General Tushar Mehta representing the Centre argued that a spouse means either husband or wife and marriage is a term associated with heterosexual couples and there was no need to file a specific reply regarding the Citizenship ActThe law as it standspersonal laws are settled and marriage which is contemplated to be is between biological man and biological woman he said adding that there is some misconception of petitioners regarding the Supreme Courts verdict decriminalising consensual homosexual actThe issue here is whether marriage is permissible between homosexual couples Your lordships have to see that There is some misconception regarding Navtej Singh Johar case It merely decriminalises consensual homosexual act It does not talk about marriage Mehta contendedTo this senior advocate Saurabh Kirpal representing one of the petitioners said while the apex court matter does not expressly allow samesex marriage the inevitable implication in the Constitutional matter favours recognising it and that this is how Constitutional jurisprudence worksThe petition filed by equal rights activists Mitra Gopi Shankar M Giti Thadani and G Oorvasi contended that homosexual sex has been decriminalised by the apex court but samesex marriages are still not being allowed under the provisions of the HMA In this view of the matter it can be stated that it is against the constitutional mandate of nonarbitrariness if the said right is not extended to homosexual apart from heterosexual couples said the petition filed through Raghav Awasthi and Mukesh SharmaThe two women who were represented by senior advocate Maneka Guruswamy and lawyers Arundhati Katju Govind Manoharan and Surabhi Dhar have said in their plea that they have been living together as a couple for 8 years in love with each other sharing the highs and lows of life but unable marry as they are a samesex coupleThe women aged 47 years and 36 years have contended that not being allowed to get married has denied them several rights owning a house opening a bank account family life insurance which oppositesex couples take for granted The two men also represented by the same set of lawyers were married in the United States but their marriage was not registered under the FMA by the Indian consulate as they were a samesex coupleThe couple who were in a relationship since 2012 and got married in 2017 have also claimed that during the Covid19 pandemic nonrecognition of their marriage by the laws here continues to disentitle them to travel as a married couple to India Central government has opposed samesex marriage on the ground that marriage in India is not just a union of two individuals but an institution between biological man and womanAlso Read Anil Deshmukh corruption case Delhi HC dismisses bail pleas of CBI official lawyerIt also said that judicial interference will cause complete havoc with the delicate balance of personal laws Any interpretation other than treating a husband as a biological man and a wife as a biological woman will make all statutory provisions unworkable it said adding that marriage is essentially a socially recognized union of two individuals which is governed either by uncodified personal laws or codified statutory lawsThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever