The Supreme Court on Thursday said it would expedite hearing on a pending petition seeking revisiting the court’s earlier definition of ‘Hindutva’ as a way of life & hear arguments for & against the plea from certain quarters to disqualify candidates if they made use of ‘Hindutva’ to seek votes.
A bench headed by CJI S A Bobde said it would hear the petition after completion of arguments in the faith versus fundamental rights case arising from pleas seeking review of the Supreme Court’s judgment striking down the religious custom banning entry of women in the 10-50 year age group into Sabarimala Ayyappa temple in Kerala.
CJI Bobde said the nine-judge bench led by him, & comprising Justices R Banumathi, Ashok Bhushan, L Nageswara Rao, Mohan M Shantanagoudar, S Abdul Nazeer, R Subhash Reddy, B R Gavai & Surya Kant, would resume hearing the Sabarimala case on a day-to-day basis from Mar 16. The hearing was derailed because one of the judges was down with swine flu.
In the case relating to Abhiram Singh, pending since 1992, senior advocate Arvind Datar said several candidates had been acquitted in the electoral malpractices case relating to the 1990 Maharashtra assembly polls. “But my client Abhiram Singh is stuck with the case as the petition was referred to a three-judge bench, then to a five-judge bench & finally to a seven-judge bench which decided to expand the scope & ambit of disqualification of a candidate for seeking votes by appealing to religion, race, caste, community or language of his own, his rival candidates or electors,” he said.
When Datar sought early hearing on Abhiram Singh’s petition, CJI Bobde said the opposite side wanted the court to revisit the definition of ‘Hindutva’. “Their prayer is to offset the ‘Hindutva’ judgment. It will take time as long arguments are expected on the issue. We will try to hear this petition after completing hearing in the Sabarimala case,” he said.
On Dec 11, 1995, in the Ramesh Yeshwant Prabhoo case, Supreme Court had ruled that mere use of the words ‘Hindutva’ or ‘Hinduism’ in an election speech would not attract the rigour of disqualification under Section 123(3) of the Representation of the People Act. “Mere use of the word ‘Hindutva’ or ‘Hinduism' or mention of any other religion in an election speech doesn't bring it within the net of sub-section (3) &/or sub-section (3A) of Section 123, unless the further elements indicated are also present in that speech,” the Supreme Court had said.
“No precise meaning can be ascribed to the terms ‘Hindu', ‘Hindutva' & ‘Hinduism', & no meaning in the abstract can confine it to the narrow limits of religion alone, excluding the content of Indian culture & heritage. It is also indicated that the term ‘Hindutva' is related more to the way of life of the people in the subcontinent,” the court held.
The court had said, “It is difficult to appreciate how in the face of these decisions, the term ‘Hindutva' or ‘Hinduism' per se, in the abstract, can be assumed to mean & be equated with narrow fundamentalist Hindu religious bigotry, or be construed to fall within the prohibition in sub-sections (3) &/or (3A) of Section 123,” it had said.
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