On Monday, the Delhi High Court opposed a petition demanding recognition of same-sex marriages, telling the Delhi high court that Covid-related matters should be prioritised as nobody was dying due to lack of marriage certificates.
Solicitor general Tushar Mehta urged a bench of justices Rajiv Sahai Endlaw and Amit Bansal to defer the hearing of the cases as they didn’t qualify as “extremely urgent” matters.
“Law officers are struggling with Covid issues. As a government, our focus in terms of urgency is on urgent, imminent issues,” Mehta said.
Senior advocate Maneka Guruswamy, appearing for another petitioner, said there are 70 million Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender (LGBT) people in the country and the community was struggling to get admissions in hospitals and was being left out everywhere.
“We cannot access our partners, cannot look after sick parents,” she said, emphasising the urgency of the matter.
To this, Mehta replied: “You don’t need marriage certificate for hospitals, nobody is dying because they don’t have marriage certificate.”
The bench then adjourned the matter to July 6, asking the Centre to seek clarification on the roster from the chief justice of the high court.
