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The Supreme Court bench hearing petitions seeking legal recognition of same-sex marriages Tuesday said it will steer clear of the area of personal laws but will only examine if the right can be conferred under The Special Marriage Act (SMA), 1954. Crucially, in response to an argument that the “legislative intent” of marriage throughout has been a “relationship between a biological man and a biological female”, the apex court underlined that “there is no absolute concept” of a man or woman.
A five-judge Constitution bench, presided by Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud, said it will restrict itself to the SMA and not broaden the canvas.
The bench, also comprising Justices S K Kaul, Ravindra Bhat, Hima Kohli and P S Narasimha, said it is better to proceed incrementally than to try and deal with it all together.
Sometimes incremental changes in issues of societal ramifications are better. There is time for everything. Therefore, what was being suggested was, can we for the time being confine only to limited issue, and not step into personal law issues.
Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Centre, urged the court to first consider the government’s objections to the maintainability of the petitions.
He said the subject involves the creation of a socio-legal relationship of marriage which is the domain of the competent legislature.
Mehta also said it was important that states be heard on the issue. He said that since the subject is on the concurrent list, one cannot rule out the possibility of a state agreeing to it and another being against it. He argued that the petitions would not be maintainable if states are not joined.
Ideas Page
Listening to Macron (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 2, International Relations)
Last week, French President Emmanuel Macron declared France is “an ally but not a vassal of the United States”. Macron was defending his comments to the press on his way back from China that Paris does not share Washington’s hostility to China and that he does not see the Taiwan crisis as a threat to Europe.
Macron’s remarks generated much outrage in the US and Europe but are welcome in China. Beijing’s official media says Macron offers the model of “strategic autonomy” for the rest of the world to follow on China.
Beijing loves to see key nations refusing to challenge China’s hegemonic policies in Asia in the name of pursuing “strategic autonomy” from the US. Russia too hopes that France and others in Europe will be less tied politically to the US.
Yet, Russia itself is moving closer to China since it launched the war against Ukraine. Some analysts are accusing Russia of becoming a “vassal” of China.
It is quite strange to think of major nuclear powers and permanent members of the UN Security Council like Russia and France as “vassals” to the US and China.
The debate in reality is not about either Europe or Russia becoming subalterns to the US or China. In fact, the US has been urging Europe and its allies to take a larger responsibility for their own security and not depend on it.
But Europe has not been willing to devote the resources necessary for such a purpose and has been happy to rely on the US for its security.
Explained
Plant ‘cries’: Recalling Jagadish Chandra Bose (Page no. 14)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
Late last month, a group of researchers from Tel Aviv University in Israel reported that they had been able to pick up distress noises made by plants.
The researchers said these plants had been making very distinct, high-pitched sounds in the ultrasonic range when faced with some kind of stress, like when they were in need of water.
This was the first time that plants had been caught making any kind of noise, and the breakthrough research findings made global headlines. But many Indians just had a sense of déjà vu.
Several previous generations of Indians had grown up hearing that Jagadish Chandra Bose had shown, more than a century ago, that plants experienced sensations and were able to feel pleasure and pain just like animals.
Children were often advised not to pluck leaves, flowers or twigs because that could cause pain to the plants or trees. The discovery that plants ‘cry’ in distress, therefore, did not come as much of a surprise to them. It seemed just a logical extension of J C Bose’s work.
Bose might not be a very familiar name to the current generation, but he is a colossal figure of Indian science. A physicist-turned-biologist, Bose, who lived between 1858 and 1937, made pioneering contributions in both the fields and was the first Indian to have made a powerful impact on modern science, much before Srinivasa Ramanujan, C V Raman, or Satyendra Nath Bose, a student of Jagadish, arrived on the scene.
How civil union is different from marriage (Page no. 14)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Governance)
A five-judge bench of the Supreme Court, headed by Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud, began hearing a batch of petitions seeking legal recognition of same sex marriage.
While the Centre, through Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, contested the maintainability of the petitions, and also the judiciary’s right to confer legal recognition on the “socio-legal institution” of marriage, the CJI clarified that the hearing’s scope would be limited to developing a notion of a “civil union” that finds legal recognition under the Special Marriage Act.
A “civil union” refers to the legal status that allows same-sex couples specific rights and responsibilities normally conferred upon married couples.
Although a civil union resembles a marriage and brings with it employment, inheritance, property, and parental rights, there are some differences between the two.
In the year 2015, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) legalised same-sex marriages across the nation with its landmark ruling in “Obergefell v. Hodges”.
Prior to the 2015 ruling, a majority of the US states had civil union laws that allowed same-sex couples to marry, without providing them formal recognition of the same.
Economy
India to appeal WTO panel ruling on ICT import tariffs; ‘limited’ PLI impact (Page no. 17)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
India is expected to appeal a recent ruling by a panel of the World Trade Organization (WTO) on its imposition of tariffs on mobile phones and electronic components in a bid to ensure that the ruling does not impact the country’s domestic manufacturing goals, especially in a sector which has seen capacity building, a senior government official said.
New Delhi faced a setback with the WTO’s dispute settlement panel ruling against the import duty levied by it on a wide range of information and communications technology (ICT) products, including mobile phones.
The panel ruled that India had violated global trade rules, siding with a complaint by the European Union (EU), Japan and Taiwan.
In 2019, the EU had challenged the import duty of 7.5 per cent – later increased to 15 per cent – levied by India in 2017 on a wide range of IT products, such as mobile phones and components, as well as integrated circuits, to curb imports and step up domestic production. Japan and Taiwan filed similar complaints later that year.