9-judge bench to deliberate if SC can refer question of law to larger bench in review jurisdiction

The 9-judge Constitution bench of the Supreme Court is set to deliberate on Thursday if the top court can refer questions of law to a larger bench while exercising its review jurisdiction.

This question arose during hearing in the Sabarimala case which relates to religious discrimination against women at various religious places.

The apex court, on its administrative side, has issued a notice intimating the parties that the 9-judge bench, headed by Chief Justice S A Bobde, would on February 6 hear argument on "whether this court can refer questions of law to a larger bench in a review petition".

The other members of the bench include justices R Banumathi, Ashok Bhushan, L Nageswara Rao, M M Shantanagoudar, S A Nazeer, R Subhash Reddy, B R Gavai and Surya Kant.

Several senior lawyers including Fali S Nariman, Kapil Sibal, Shyam Divan, Rajeev Dhavan and Rakesh Dwivedi argued on February 3 that while exercising review jurisdiction the Supreme Court does not have powers to refer a question of law to a larger bench.

They said that last year's November 14 verdict of 5-judge bench, headed by the then CJI Rajan Gogoi, was wrong in making a reference of broad contours while deciding the review petition against the 2018 judgement which allowed women of all age group to enter Kerala's Sabarimala temple.

Besides Sabarimala, the last year's verdict had also referred issues of entry of Muslim women into mosques and 'dargah' and Parsi women, married to non-Parsi men, being barred from the holy fire place of an Agyari, to the larger bench.

The senior lawyers had assailed as "erroneous" the reference made to larger bench by a 5-judge bench on questions related to discrimination of women in religious places while dealing with the Sabarimala case.

Nariman had said, "This is not practice which have been adopted by the Supreme Court since Privy Council days and there are several judgements to this effect."