New Delhi : The Supreme Court has entertained a Catholic Christian group from Kerala to implead itself in a case filed for enforcing the Uniform Civil Code, after it pleaded for curbs on the malpractices in the name of religious freedom.
[alert type=”e.g. warning, danger, success, info” title=””] The petition holds significance since the Supreme Court has already asked the Centre whether it wants to implement Article 44 of the Constitution on the Uniform Civil Court.[/alert]
A Bench headed by Chief Justice of India T S Thakur early this month issued notice to the Centre on the petition by a body called “Joint Christian Council” (JCC), demanding to strike down the “church courts” on the ground that such religious courts that adjudicate personal laws of a particular religion are ‘divisive’ for a secular India and “anachronistic” in a modern democratic state.
Seeking de-recognition of all decisions taken by “Ecclesiastical Courts,” the petitioners told the court that several Catholic men had remarried after their first marriage was annulled by these courts. The JCC contended that thousands of Catholic men have taken shelter under this religious practice to escape arrest for bigamy under the Indian Penal Code.
The petition holds significance since the Supreme Court has already asked the Centre whether it wants to implement Article 44 of the Constitution on the Uniform Civil Court. Another Bench of the Court is already seized with the issue of validity of the Sharia law that forms the code of law for marriage and divorce among the Muslims.
Decrying multiple legal systems for different religions, the JCC petition says: “It is dangerously divisive for secular India to give special privilege to a particular faith in the form of Ecclesiastical Courts.” It says these courts are peculiar to English jurisprudence which has a state religion. These courts were controlled by the Church but by the 19th century many of the clauses dealt with by over 364 Ecclesiastical Courts were either abolished or stood transferred to civil courts.
