Kerala minister: No protection for women visiting Sabarimala

The Left-led
government in Kerala said on Friday it has no plan to give protection and take
women to the Sabarimala, a day after the Supreme Court kept the doors of
hilltop shrine open to women for now but decided to set up a larger bench to
revisit it’s verdict from last year from a wider perspective.

The state’s
temple affairs minister Kadakampally Surendran said that the government will
not encourage women to gate crash the temple.

“It is
proper to maintain the status quo at the temple. The government is all for
peace,” Surendran said during a press conference in the state capital of
Thiruvananthapuram.

The
five-judge bench led by Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi gave its decision
on Thursday in a majority 3:2 verdict. Justice Indu Malhotra, who have given a challenging
judgment in this case last year, and Justice AM Khanwilkar were the other two
judges.

Justice RF
Nariman and Justice DY Chandrachud have backed rejecting the 65-odd review
petitions against the September 2018 verdict that opened the doors of the
Sabarimala temple to women.

The 2018
verdict had called the practice of barring women of a certain age group from
entering the temple illegal and unconstitutional, triggering protests by
traditionalists in the state.

 It had held that their exclusion on the basis
of biological and physiological features denied women the right to be treated
as equals.

There were
huge protests outside the temple nestled in the Western Ghats in Kerala’s
Pathanamthitta district after last year’s verdict. Two people were killed and
50,000 protesters were booked at its peak by the police.

The protests
had the support of temple priests, who insisted that the presiding deity, Lord
Ayyappa, is a celibate and women of menstruating age can’t be allowed.

The minister
said the government has sought legal advice and it got an opinion to maintain
status quo.