Original Sabarimala PIL should’ve been binned: Supreme Court

NEW DELHI: A nine-judge Supreme Court bench led by CJI Surya Kant on Tuesday said the SC in 2006 should have outrightly “thrown in the dustbin’ the original PIL that led to quashing of Sabarimala Ayyappa Temple custom restricting entry of women in the 10 to 50 age group.

“All India Young Lawyers Association’, which filed the PIL in 2006 through its president Naushad Ali, narrated through senior advocate RP Gupta how a misconduct by the thantri of Ayyappa temple led to filing of the petition challenging the restriction.

The bench led by CJI Kant said SC at best could have ordered investigations into the misconduct to bring the guilty to the book. But based on newspaper reports, the PIL could not have been entertained, it said.

The bench said, “SC had entertained the PIL based on ‘such documents’, which should have been thrown in the dustbin. Locus standi was generated based on newspaper reports. SC should have ensured that action against the offender is expedited and nothing more.”

The nine-judge bench consists of CJI Kant, Justices B V Nagarathna, M M Sundresh, Ahsanuddin Amanullah, Aravind Kumar, Augustine G Masih, Prasanna B Varale, R Mahadevan and Joymalya Bagchi. Justice Kumar asked whether the lawyers’ body had passed a resolution for filing the PIL and whether it was a registered body.

Gupta said there was no resolution and that though Naushad Ali was only a name-lender, threats were given to him as well as to his counsel. “Then CJI Dipak Misra, who was the architect of the controversial judgment, had offered security for the petitioner and its counsel. Then CJI Misra had said that even if the petitioner wanted to withdraw the PIL, the court would not allow it,” Gupta informed.

CJI Kant observed, “So it was de facto a suo motu petition (taken up on its own by the court) de jure filed by the petitioner organisation?” The suggestion that the matter had been, in effect, engineered by the bench led by then CJI Misra found some confirmation in Justice Nagarathna’s remark: “This is a realistic assessment of the CJI (Kant).”

Justice Nagarathna said, “The former CJI offered security to you and the petitioner organisation president. He could have ensured no security threat to you by not entertaining the petition. Why would a non-believer in Ayyappa question the temple customs carried on for decades based on faith and belief of devotees?”

“Are you the chief priest of the country to question temple customs and say how can there be such a custom in Ayyappa temple at Sabarimala,” she said. Justice Sundresh said it appears to be a clear case of abuse of process of law.

Justice Nagarathna said SC now entertains genuine PILs and is strongly against the private-publicity-paisapolitical interest litigations