Gay sex: Petition in Supreme Court for dismissal of Centre's review plea

A petition has been filed in the Supreme Court for dismissal of Centre's plea seeking review of its judgement on making gay sex an offence in the country.

The petition alleged that the review petition is against the constitutional norms as the government cannot ask the court to set aside the penal provision Section 377 of the IPC which is a parliamentary statute.

"The review petition distorts the fine constitutional balance between the Parliament, government of India and the apex court by effectively creating an unwarranted conflict between the Parliament and the government of India and by needlessly interposing this court into the said conflict. As such, the petition filed by Centre deserves to be dismissed in entirety," the petition, filed by advocate Vishwanath Chaturvedi, said.

He submitted that the government should have brought the amendment in the law if it felt aggrieved by the apex court's verdict which had uphold the constitutional validity of Section 377.

"The cause of democracy is better served by the legislature stepping in to modify the statute rather than a judge pour unwarranted meaning into the dead words of a statute," he said.

While setting aside the July 2, 2009 judgement of the Delhi High Court decriminalising gay sex, the apex court on December 11 last year had held that Section 377 (unnatural sexual offences) of the IPC does not suffer from the vice of unconstitutionality and that the declaration made by the high court is legally unsustainable.

The verdict sparked protests across the country and people from different walks of life strongly criticised it.

The Centre and the gay rights activists later moved a review petition in the apex court.