Review pleas to come up on November 13

NEW DELHI/THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Supreme Court said on Tuesday it will hear on November 13 a clutch of review petitions challenging the apex court’s verdict that lifted a ban on women aged between 10 and 50 years from entering Kerala’s Sabarimala hill shrine, even as the order remained unimplemented last week amid protesters stopping several women from worshipping at the temple.

A bench of CJI Ranjan Gogoi and Justice SK Kaul passed the order to hear the 19 petitions after the case was mentioned on Monday. The order came on a day Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan accused the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) of ‘hidden conspiracy’ to destroy peace at the temple.

The doors to the Lord Ayyappa shrine closed on Monday, six days after opening for the first time since the Supreme Court lifted the ban.

The advocate for the Ayappa Devotees Association argued before the apex court that its judgment needed a relook.

The petition said that faith cannot be judged by scientific reasons or logic.

At least 10 women in the age

group of 10 to 50 made failed attempts to trek the hills to worship at the temple as protesters, sometimes violent, prevented them from proceeding to the shrine.

In Kerala, Vijayan accused the BJP and RSS of turning the pilgrim spot into a battle ground to gain a foot-hold in the state’s politics. The chief minister was also critical of the tantri, or the temple’s

chief priest, who stopped rituals to force two women – a journalist and an activist – to give up their attempt to enter the temple after they reached within 500 metres of it.