Section 377
The observations came when senior advocate CU Singh, appearing for one of the intervenors, said mere striking down of section 377 will not serve the purpose as the LGBTQ community are being discriminated against on various counts.
“This community feels inhibited as they do not get even proper medical care because of the prejudice,” Justice Malhotra said, adding even medical professionals do not maintain confidentiality.
On Wednesday, the government had left it to the apex court to test the constitutional validity of section 377 of the IPC which criminalises “consensual acts of adults in private”, urging that issues like gay marriages, adoption and ancillary civil rights of LGBTQ should not be dealt by it.
Taking note of the Centre’s submission that other issues like gay marriages, adoption and ancillary civil rights of LGBTQ community should not be dealt, the court said it was not considering all these issues.
The bench had said it would test the validity of the law in relation to the consensual sexual acts of two adults and if it decides to strike down the penal provision then it would remove “ancillary disqualification” of LGBTQ community members which can join services, contest elections and form associations.
Lawyer Guruswamy had yesterday referred to reports of Indian and American psychiatric bodies and said homosexuality was a normal sexual orientation.
Terming the law as a “terrible colonial legacy”, she had said it violated Articles 15 (discrimination on sex), 14 (equality), 19 (liberty) and 21 of the Constitution and has a “chilling effect” on the sexual minority. cation for permitting only Brahmins to carry out rites and rituals as priests.
“The custom of restricting functions of priests or poojaris to Brahmins only, is violative of human rights, human dignity, concept of social equality and the specific mandate of the Constitution and cannot be considered an integral part of the Hindu region”, the bench observed.
“The exclusion of persons from temples open to worship to the Hindu public at large, only on the pretext that they belong to the excluded community, is violative of Article 17 of the Constitution of India. Every person to whatsoever caste he/she belongs has a right to visit/enter the temple and worship and perform religious ceremonies/rituals,” the order said.
Hailing the verdict, spiritual guru turned politician Ravi Dasacharya Suresh Rathore who is also the BJP legislator from Jwalapur, Haridwar, said: “It is a landmark decision, which will herald a new era in religious ritual structure of our civilisation, which is unique in whole world. Sant Ravidass preached removal of social divisions of caste and gender, now the court too has followed suit.”
There were however voices that disagreed with the petitioners’ contention of discrimination on the basis of caste.
“We don’t deny pilgrims who hail from scheduled caste, schedule tribe communities. Ganga never differentiates on people’s caste or community. Nainital high court order is welcome for only such places where differentiation takes place, so much should not be taken out of the decision that dalits face bias in Uttarakhand temples, shrines or ghats,” claimed senior ‘teerth purohit’ Anshul Shrikunj. has been a growing clamour for central regulations. And although regulation of educationrelated matter is the domain of the HRD ministry, the NCPCR has stepped in to draft the proposed fee regulations for unaided schools, citing Section 13 of the for Protection of Child Rights (CPCR) Act, 2005 and Section 32 of Right to Education (RTE) Act.
Section 13 of CPCR Act mandates the NCPCR to examine and review the safeguards provided under the law for protection of child rights and recommend measures for their effective implementation; present to the central government, annually and at other intervals, as the Commission may see fit, reports on the working of those safeguards.
Section 32 of RTE Act says that any person with a grievance relating to the right of a child and who is aggrieved by a decision made by a local authority may appeal to the State Commission for Protection of Child Rights or any other mandated authority. “Both these acts allow us to intervene in the matter and ensure that the rights of the child are upheld,” said the second NCPCR official cited above.
Professor Vimla Ramachandran of National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration, who has been working on elementary education, said that central regulation to check arbitrary fee hike will be a welcome move . “But the private school lobby is very strong and will not allow it to go through,” she said.
Ramachandran said that along with the regulation what is also needed is to improve the quality of government schools so that children from middle and low income group have an option. “Right now with deteriorating standards of government schools, parents do not have a choice but to send their children to private schools and suffer arbitrary fee hike.”
In the last few years some states such as Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Punjab and more recently Uttar Pradesh have framed laws to regulate fees charged by private, unaided schools.
Delhi government had passed a bill to regulate fee hike in such schools way back in 2015 but it is yet to be become an Act after the Centre objected to some of its provisions.
Pramod Lohia, a parent whose two children study in Delhi’s Mahavir Model Senior Secondary School is a harassed parent. “Every year, the school increases the fee by 15 %. This year, apart from the fee hike they have taken development charge also but hardly any facilities have been added in the school .... I have to send my children to private tuition because what they are taught in school is not adequate. At least if there is a uniform fee regulation, such arbitrariness will come to an end.”
The fee law isn’t uniform across states that have them. The Gujarat law, for instance, allows the state government to establish fee regulatory committees in each zone to regulate the fees charged by self-financed and private, unaided schools. The Punjab Regulation of fee of Unaided Educational Institution law puts an 8% cap on fee hikes and prescribes a penalty of ₹2 lakh for violations.
But lax monitoring has resulted in unaided schools continuing with arbitrary fee hikes. “The fee structure also varies. A central regulation will go a long way in bringing uniformity in fee structure of such schools and can also result in strict enforcement,” the first official said.
“There should be a central regulation and there should be at least 50% representation of parents in the school management committee,” said Ashok Aggarwal, national president of the All India Parents’ Association.