Section 377 hearing: Attorney General KK Venugopal recuses himself, says 'stand differs from govt's'

Hours after the hearing at the Supreme Court on the contentious issue of Section 377 on Tuesday, Attorney-General KK Venugopal recused himself from the case citing difference of opinion with the government. “I can’t appear because govt of India has a different stand,” Venugopal was quoted as saying by ANI.

Venugopal further said, “By the time they (judges) come to Supreme Court they’ll have to have a lot of experience. When they start presiding over a bench…they would be able to only do that as a fag end and I find many of them are having unfinished cases because of short-phased age.” On Tuesday, a five-judge Supreme Court bench concluded after a crucial hearing on a clutch of petitions seeking decriminalisation of consensual sex between two adults of the same gender. The hearing would continue on Wednesday before the bench which had assembled to hear petitions challenging the vires of Section 377 of the India Penal Code (IPC). At the outset, the court said it would only deal with the question of the validity of section 377 that bans homosexuality after it was submitted by a petitioner that it should not restrict the hearing to just this IPC provision. However, the apex court declined to wade into the issue of marriage in the LGBT groups or inheritance in their live-in relationships. Earlier on Tuesday, in another development, a bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra, Justice AM Khanwilkar and Justice DY Chandrachud sought the assistance of Attorney General KK Venugopal and other senior lawyers about opening to livestream Supreme Court proceedings under “comprehensive and holistic guidelines”. Venugopal had told the court that the government would set up a dedicated channel on the lines of the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha TVs if the court decided to go for the live telecast of its proceedings. With inputs from agencies