Key Points:
- On Wednesday, the Supreme Court agreed to examine the Central government’s request to keep adultery a crime in the armed forces. The reason behind the plea was to avoid ‘instability’ among the ranks due to the 2018 decriminalized law of ‘Adultery’.
- Referring the matter to Chief Justice S A Bobde, a three-judge bench comprising Navin Sinha and K M Joseph and headed by Justice Rohinton Nariman took up the application submitted by Ministry of Defence and issued a notice to the petitioner on whose plea section 497 of IPC was declared unconstitutional.
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court agreed to examine the Central government’s request to keep adultery a crime in the armed forces. The reason behind the plea was to avoid ‘instability’ among the ranks due to the 2018 decriminalized law of ‘Adultery’.
The Centre, in its plea, said the 2018 verdict should not apply to armed forces where personnel can be cashiered from service on the grounds of unbecoming conduct for committing adultery with a colleague’s wife.
Referring the matter to Chief Justice S A Bobde, a three-judge bench comprising Navin Sinha and K M Joseph and headed by Justice Rohinton Nariman took up the application submitted by Ministry of Defence and issued a notice to the petitioner on whose plea section 497 of IPC was declared unconstitutional. The bench asked Bobde for setting up of a five-judge Constitution Bench which can clarify the position.
The petition further says the Supreme Court, while deciding the constitutionality of the adultery law, apparently had not taken into account the peculiar service conditions of the defence personnel and the fact that the framers of the Constitution had specifically authorised Parliament for abrogation of their fundamental rights in terms of Article 33 of the Constitution.
In a path-breaking verdict, on September 27, 2018, a five-judge Constitution bench headed by the then Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra unanimously struck down Section 497 (adultery) of the IPC and declared that adultery is not a crime. The act only punished the men for having a sexual relationship with a married woman, as unconstitutional. The then CJI, Dipak Mishra declared the verdict saying, “The 158-year-old Victorian-era law is manifestly arbitrary and violated woman’s right to equality and right to non-discrimination guaranteed under Article 14 and Article 15 of the Indian Constitution as it treats them as chattels.”
