'Not For Court To Decide' : Supreme Court On Plea Seeking Uniform Personal Laws

The Supreme Court on Monday adjourned a batch of Public Interest Litigations seeking uniformity in the personal laws regulating marriage divorce, maintenance, and alimony for Indian citizens by four weeks. The batch was listed before a bench comprising Chief Justice DY Chandrachud, Justice PS Narasimha, and Justice JB Pardiwala. 

At the outset, Senior Advocate Kapil Sibal raised a preliminary objection with certain prayers raised in the batch of petition. He said–

"Can such prayers be made before your lordships? This is for the government to decide whatever they wish to do. What's the basis of this? I can understand that these issues can be individually taken up. I have no problem with that. But we cannot have an omnibus petition with these kind of prayers."

Senior Advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan, appearing for petitioner Ashwini Upadhyay, interjected and said– 

"There are multiple prayers. The prayer concerning asking the Law commission to prepare a report – how can that be objected to? This is specific in asking that make gender neutral laws. One of the petitioners is a Muslim woman and she says that I want my law to be general neutral."

CJI DY Chandrachud asked–

"These are legislative functions. How can we decide?"

Solicitor General of India Tushar Mehta intervened and said–

"In principle, there cannot be any objection to gender neutral and uniform laws. It is for your lordships to consider what can be done on the judicial side."

However, Senior Advocate Kapil Sibal objected to the same and said–

"The court should not be seen to be issuing even prima facie orders in this matter. This can send the kind of signals which are entirely within the domain of the legislature."

The bench stated that it would hear the petition and then see what was to be done. The matter is now listed after four weeks.

The bench was hearing a batch of six PILs - four PILs filed by lawyer Ashwini Upadhyay, one petition filed by Lubna Qureshi and another petition filed by Doris Martin.

Case Title: Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay v. UoI And Ors. WP(C) No. 869/2020

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