Supreme Court rejects Naz Foundation Review Petition; Says no reason for interference made out

A Division Bench of Justices HL Dattu and SJ Mukhopadhaya rejected a review petition filed by, amongst others, the Union of India against the December 11 judgment in the Naz Foundation case..In 2009, the Delhi High Court had de-criminalized certain provisions of S. 377 of the Indian Penal Code. The High Court had held that criminalizing consensual homosexual acts between adults was in violation of the Constitution of India. The decision was seen as a major victory for LGBT rights activists..The Delhi High Court’s decision was subsequently challenged, not by the Union of India, but by several parties who claimed to have been affected by the High Court’s decision. Two years after the Supreme Court took up the matter, the Apex Court delivered a 98-page judgment that stated,.Section 377 IPC does not suffer from the vice of unconstitutionality and the declaration made by the Division Bench of the High court is legally unsustainable..A week after this judgment was delivered, on December 20 the Union of India filed a review petition against the judgment, stating that,.Section 377 which criminalizes intercourse ‘against the order of nature’ is a reflection of outdated sodomy laws of the United Kingdom which were transplanted into India in 1860.The review petition, along with an oral hearing application, was heard in chambers by the Division Bench at 1:45 pm today. Dismissing both the petition as well as the application, the Bench held that,.We see no reason to interfere with the order impugned. The Review Petitions are, accordingly, dismissed..The dismissal was not altogether unexpected, with Senior Advocate Anand Grover, counsel for Naz Foundation admitting as much in an interview given two days after the Supreme Court verdict was delivered. .In the interview, Grover had said that,.“We will file a review and we will also look at filing a curative petition. These are the two options and the third option is writ petition in a case but that won’t set aside the judgment.....We don’t have much hope [of the review petition] succeeding but we will try.”.Naz Foundation Review