Gay sex is not offence, HC verdict acceptable: Centre tells SC

Mar 21, 2012 |

New Delhi

Tags:

The government on Wednesday clarified its stand on homosexuality before the Supreme Court, saying it is in favour of decriminalisation of gay sex and the Delhi High Court verdict is acceptable to it.

Attorney General G. E. Vahanvati justified the change in the Centre's stand on decriminalisation of gay sex, saying that the government ‘learnt and subsequently got enlightened’ from the Delhi High Court verdict.

Vahanvati, who was on Tuesday asked by a bench of justices G. S. Singhvi and S. J. Mukhopadhaya to clarify the government's stand on the issue, said there is no legal error in the high court judgment and ‘it is acceptable to us (government)’.

The bench then queried whether the affidavit filed in the high court by the Home Ministry, opposing gay sex, was wrong. Vahanvati then replied that the government learnt from the HC verdict and took the stand that criminalisation of gay sex is in violation of Fundamental Rights of homosexuals.

"When we read the judgment, we learnt from it and subsequent enlightenment," Vahanvati told the bench, adding, the ‘government accepts correctness’ of high court judgment and didn't file appeal against it.

He also said that the recent goof up in the apex court where Additional Solicitor General P. P. Malhotra opposed gay sex was a result of lack of communication between the law officers and the Home Ministry.

Post new comment

<form action="/comment/reply/135865" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post" id="comment-form"> <div><div class="form-item" id="edit-name-wrapper"> <label for="edit-name">Your name: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="60" name="name" id="edit-name" size="30" value="Reader" class="form-text required" /> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-mail-wrapper"> <label for="edit-mail">E-Mail Address: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="64" name="mail" id="edit-mail" size="30" value="" class="form-text required" /> <div class="description">The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.</div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-comment-wrapper"> <label for="edit-comment">Comment: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <textarea cols="60" rows="15" name="comment" id="edit-comment" class="form-textarea resizable required"></textarea> </div> <fieldset class=" collapsible collapsed"><legend>Input format</legend><div class="form-item" id="edit-format-1-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-1"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-1" name="format" value="1" class="form-radio" /> Filtered HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd></li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-format-2-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-2"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-2" name="format" value="2" checked="checked" class="form-radio" /> Full HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> </fieldset> <input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" id="form-2a259cb077e287f514a30299db5327f0" value="form-2a259cb077e287f514a30299db5327f0" /> <input type="hidden" name="form_id" id="edit-comment-form" value="comment_form" /> <fieldset class="captcha"><legend>CAPTCHA</legend><div class="description">This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.</div><input type="hidden" name="captcha_sid" id="edit-captcha-sid" value="85120654" /> <input type="hidden" name="captcha_response" id="edit-captcha-response" value="NLPCaptcha" /> <div class="form-item"> <div id="nlpcaptcha_ajax_api_container"><script type="text/javascript"> var NLPOptions = {key:'c4823cf77a2526b0fba265e2af75c1b5'};</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://call.nlpcaptcha.in/js/captcha.js" ></script></div> </div> </fieldset> <span class="btn-left"><span class="btn-right"><input type="submit" name="op" id="edit-submit" value="Save" class="form-submit" /></span></span> </div></form>