4 petitions seek Sabarimala verdict’s review

Satya Prakash

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, October 8 

Ten days after a Constitution Bench lifted the age-old restriction on the entry of procreating women into the famous Lord Ayyappa Temple at Sabarimala in Kerala, four petitions were filed on Monday seeking a review of the Supreme Court’s verdict that has evoked a series of protests by women devotees.

By a 4:1 verdict, a five-judge Constitution Bench had declared the practice unconstitutional. Justice Indu Malhotra, the lone woman on the Bench, had dissented. 

The review petitioners, including Nair Service Society and People for Dharma, said the top court wrongly concluded that exclusion of women between the age of 10 and 50 was discriminatory and erred in allowing women of all age groups into the Sabarimala Temple.

“Apart from patent legal errors, the factually erroneous assumption that the practice of the temple is based on notions of menstrual impurity has materially contributed to the majority view. This necessitates a review,” read a petition.

The petitioners submitted that to deny a religious denomination status to Sabarimala Temple and Lord Ayyappa’s devotees merely because they did not conform to Abrahamic notions of religious denominations “is to defeat the very object of the absence of a definition and to abrahamise the core of the Hindu faith, which is unconstitutional”.

“In the present case, the subsequent events that transpired after the judgment of which judicial notice may be taken, clearly demonstrate that overwhelmingly large sections of women worshippers are supporting the custom of prohibiting entry of females between the age of 10 and 50 years,” Nair Service Society said, adding its submissions had not been set out in the judgment.

A petition submitted that the judgment was an interference with the faith of millions of devotees of Lord Ayyappa.