SG Mehta: The state should step in only when the state feels that it is in legitimate interest to regulate a relationship and recognition is only a consequence of that.
SG Mehta: Your lordships never remotely considered marriage as an abstract proposition to be declared a fundamental right.
CJI DY Chandrachud: Ofcourse, there is no delegation of judicial powers
SG Mehta: I have filed a note. There are only three points I wish to make. Recognition of marriage is not a fundamental right.
SG Mehta: It is their intimate relationship, the state has no right to regulate or recognise. Why the recognition came? Because the court felt that we will have to regulate- you cannot marry at any age, many times, say bye bye whenever you want, children may be there.
SG Mehta: While giving suggestions, I would ask them to not give jurisprudential ideas, only problems that can be addressed on administrative side. It shouldn't happen that the committee doesn't understand what is going on.
Guruswamy: In US, after the SC gave its broad and firm declaration, the counsels then sat with the government and went through each law. Each department sat with them and saw 710 laws and sorted it out line by line.
Justice Bhat: That was different. We're literally putting alphabet together. It's that much harder.
Justice Bhat: If you're likely to get it, just sit back and think what you're gaining. And then if you still want that declaration, we'll have to examine.
Justice Bhat: Don't see this as the end of the battle. Your movement for equal recognition will always remain. Even if you don't accept this or partly accept this, it won't be the end of what you do.
CJI DY Chandrachud: We don't want the movement to be in a situation where there is nothing else in hand and the matter goes.
Justice Bhat: You're all aware of the history, better than us. You are circumventing all that. Ofcourse there is a lot of feelings in this, but if you do gain something out of this, that's a big big positive.
CJI DY Chandrachud: This is a social institution which is evolving over time. But the court can ensured by acting as a facilitator that real progress is achieved today in terms of your wider societal acceptance to cohabit together.
CJI DY Chandrachud: Suppose we were to come to the conclusion that this argument is not as simple as it appears- that there are too many interlinks with other statutes, then what?
CJI DY Chandrachud: There is a problem with this line of argument. I understand the feelings out of which this argument comes but on the constitutional level there's a problem.
CJI DY Chandrachud: If we go by what young people feel, as a constitutional court, then we will be subject to volumes of what other people feel. The court has to go by constitutional mandate. We don't go by a popular morality.
Guruswamy: Young people in our country want marriage. I don't say this as an elite lawyer. I say this as someone having met these young people. Do not let them experience what we have experienced. Every study indicates...