NEW DELHI: In 2018, CJI DY Chandrachud set the ball rolling to accord the right of equal existence to the queer community. The CJI was then a part of the Navtej Singh Johar verdict in which the Supreme Court ruled that the denial of the right to sexual orientation to LGBT amounted to the denial of their citizenship.
Justice Chandrachud stressed that Section 377 of IPC had caged the human instinct of love by constraining the physical manifestation of sexuality. He said the provision had consigned a group of citizens to the margins and was destructive of their identities.
In his speech at the British High Commission on ‘Beyond Navtej: The Future of LGBTQ+ Movement in India,’ Justice Chandrachud said he disagreed with the lyrics of the famous Beatles’ song ‘All You Need Is Love’. He said the ruling in the Navtej case was on its own insufficient to aid the community in achieving equality and ending discrimination against LGBTQ+ community. The CJI thus emerged as a saviour of queers’ rights to bestow on them truly equal citizenship.
The CJI this year agreed to place before a bench a batch of pleas seeking legal recognition to same-sex marriage. After an extensive hearing spanning 10 days, the bench reserved its verdict in the same-sex marriage case. However, the formation of the five-judge constitution bench headed by the CJI prompted the Centre to form a committee headed by the Cabinet Secretary to explore the administrative steps that can be taken to accord basic social rights to same-sex couples. The government had termed this form of marriage as an “urban elitist concept.”
The CJI while discussing the ambit of gender and whether it expanded beyond the biological sex of a person had on day one of the hearing said that the very notion of a man and a woman is not “an absolute based on genitals”. Asserting that the existence of same-sex couples was not imported from somewhere else, was a part of the society and that same-sex relationships are “not just physical but something more of a stable emotional relationship, the CJI had also questioned the need for being a binary gender for marriage.
The CJI has also undertaken initiatives for revisiting the modes of organisation and spatial developments aimed explicitly at the sensitisation of the LGBTQIA+ community. For their inclusion within the SC, the top court under his aegis is in the process of creating nine universal restrooms at different locations in the main building and additional building of the court complex.
To further ensure a “dignified work environment” the SC earlier this year also made an “online appearance portal” gender-neutral and inducted senior advocate Dr Maneka Guruswamy as a member of “gender sensitization and Internal Complaints Committee (GSICC).
The top court is also actively considering the proposal put forth by an advocate from the community of broadening the scope of GSICC to the Gender and Sexuality Sensitization and Internal Complaints Committee.
‘Section 377 constrained physical manifestation’ Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud stressed that Section 377 of IPC had caged the human instinct of love by constraining the physical manifestation of sexuality. He said the provision had consigned a group of citizens to the margins and was destructive of their identities. The CJI while discussing the ambit of gender and whether it expanded beyond the biological sex of a person had on day one of the hearing said that the very notion of a man and a woman is not “an absolute based on genitals”
