Highlights

• A nine-member Bench’s verdict last year in Justice K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India, which said “the right to privacy and the protection of sexual orientation lie at the core of the fundamental rights guaranteed by Articles 14, 15 and 21 of the Constitution”.
• In other words, a whole gamut of rights flowing from the decriminalisation of homosexual relationships must be examined, if not now, then at least as and when they arise.
• Once homosexuality is no more an offence, it may lead to demands to legalise same-sex marriages and inheritance by survivorship among gay partners.
• The extension of constitutional rights to citizens, irrespective of gender and sexual orientation, is long overdue.

Source: The Hindu