Judgment in same-sex marriage a vote of conscience; I stand by my judgment: CJI DY Chandrachud

Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud on Monday said that judgments rendered on Constitutional issues are many times a vote of conscience and that he stands by his minority judgment in the same-sex marriage case. .He said that out of all the Constitution Bench judgments rendered by the Supreme Court of India from its inception in 1950 till date, there have been only thirteen instances where the CJI was in minority. "Sometimes it is a vote of the conscience and vote of the constitution and I stand by what I said," he said..He was speaking at the 3rd Comparative Constitutional Law discussion co-hosted by Georgetown University Law Center, Washington DC and Society for Democratic Rights (SDR), New Delhi on the topic Perspectives from the Supreme Courts of India and the United States will be held on Monday.The conversation was held physically for the first time at the Georgetown University Law Center, Washington DC, USA."I was in minority was where I held queer couple can adopt if they are together and then three of my colleagues differed that not allowing queer couples to adopt was discriminatory but then it was for the parliament to decide this," the CJI explained his judgment..He also explained how the top court's 2018 decision to decriminalise consensual homosexual sex had led to petitions to recognise same-sex marriage."In 2018 we reversed a judgment of the SC where we decriminalized consensual homosxual relations and that was not the end of the rights for LGBTQIA+. Then we had petitions for same sex marriage recognition under the secular law of Special Marriage Act (SMA). SMA spoke about prohibited degrees of relation and was for man and woman. One of the key questions was does the court have the jurisdiction to enter into this domain. The court unanimously decided that while we have progressed a great deal by recognising queer as equal participants in society and legislating on it falls within role of parliament and by judicial fiat we cannot enter this which gets into succession, inheritance etc. But where I got into minority was by recognising civil unions and we held that conscious and subconscious was larger than religion. Three of my colleagues felt that right to form unions also falls within the role of the parliament," he elaborated..[Watch full event below]