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The Supreme Court connected Saturday (April 4, 2026) notified the nine-judge Bench headed by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant, which is scheduled to perceive the Sabarimala reappraisal lawsuit from April 7.
Besides Chief Justice Kant, the Bench would comprise Justices B.V. Nagarathna, M.M. Sundresh, Ahsanuddin Amanullah, Aravind Kumar, A.G. Masih, R. Mahadevan, Prasanna B. Varale, and Joymalya Bagchi.
The lawsuit consists of a bid of writ pleas and reappraisal petitions based connected a 2018 verdict allowing women of menstruating property introduction into the Sabarimala Ayyappa temple successful Kerala. A nine-judge Bench would beryllium taking up the lawsuit for a important proceeding connected the Constitutional questions progressive aft a hiatus of implicit six years.
An earlier nine-judge Bench had been constituted successful 2019 by past Chief Justice of India Sharad A. Bobde. The hearings earlier that Bench had to beryllium aborted abruptly owed to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Chief Justice Kant is the lone remaining serving justice of the erstwhile nine-judge Bench.
The Supreme Court intends to perceive and wrapper up the lawsuit by the extremity of April. The nine-judge Bench has provided petitioners proceeding slots from April 7 to April 9. Those opposing them would beryllium heard from April 14 to April 16. The rejoinder submissions would beryllium heard connected April 21, followed by the concluding submissions from the amicus curiae connected April 22. Parties person to adhere to the timeline, the tribunal has stressed.
In November 2019, a bulk judgement by a five-judge Constitution Bench led by the past Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi had initially referred the Sabarimala reappraisal and writ petitions to a seven-judge Bench.
But the 2019 bulk judgement did not confine the notation to simply the Sabarimala case. It had taken a wider position of the questions of instrumentality which touched connected the ecclesiastical, including whether spiritual practices considered indispensable should beryllium fixed Constitutional protection, and the grade of judicial involution successful specified matters.
The Gogoi Bench had clubbed the Sabarimala lawsuit reappraisal with different pending petitions concerning different faiths, but posing akin questions of law. These included the close of Muslim women to participate mosques; the close of Parsi women who person joined retired of their religion to participate their spiritual spot of worship, and the contented of pistillate genital mutilation practised by the Dawoodi Bohra community.
Chief Justice Bobde (as helium was then) had constituted a nine-judge Bench, alternatively of a seven-judge Bench, arsenic it was recovered indispensable to analyse a 1954 judgement by a seven-judge Bench successful the Shirur Mutt case. Any overturning of the Shirur Mutt case, which had for the archetypal clip gone into the contented of 'essential spiritual practice', would necessitate a Bench of larger numerical strength.
