In Supriyo @ Supriya Chakraborty v. Union of India, (Sup. Ct. India, Oct. 17, 2023), a 5-judge bench of India's Supreme Court, in 4 opinions spanning 366 pages, refused to recognize same-sex marriages, but called on the government to study and implement further rights for same-sex couples. As summarized by BBC News:
The petitioners had argued that not being able to marry violated their constitutional rights and made them "second-class citizens".
They had suggested that the court could just replace "man" and "woman" with "spouse" in the Special Marriage Act - which allows marriage between people from different religions, castes and countries - to include same-sex unions.
The government and religious leaders had strongly opposed the petitions. The government had insisted that only parliament could discuss the socio-legal issue of marriage and argued that allowing same-sex marriage would lead to "chaos" in society.
On Tuesday, the judges agreed with the government, saying that only parliament could make law and the judges could only interpret them.
They accepted Solicitor General Tushar Mehta's proposal on behalf of the government to set up a committee, headed by the country's top bureaucrat, to consider "granting queer couples" rights and privileges available to heterosexual couples.
