NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court is expected to deliver two key verdicts on Thursday-one that will decide the constitutional validity of the offence of adultery and the other pertaining to the Ismail Faruqui judgment in which it was said that mosque is not an integral part of Islam should be re-examined by a larger Bench.
A three-judge Bench of Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra and Justices Ashok Bhushan and S Abdul Nazeer had taken up the long-pending Ayodhya land title appeals against the Allahabad High Court judgment of 2010, which had ordered a three-way partition of the disputed land. In 1994, a five-judge Constitution Bench, hearing the M Ismail Faruqui vs Union of India case, had held that a mosque was not an “essential part of the practice of the religion of Islam” and hence “its acquisition (by the state) is not prohibited by the provisions in the Constitution of India”. This issue was once again raised during the hearing of the Ayodhya title suit.
A five-judge constitution will pass a judgment on the petition challenging the constitutional validity of Section 497 (Adultery) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
A three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra had referred the matter to a Constitution bench on the plea claiming that it is discriminatory towards men. The bench had reserved its judgment in August.
Hearing the mater, the apex court questioned the government’s stand defending the adultery law that punishes a man for having a sexual relationship with a married woman without the consent of her husband.