Will SC end personal laws’ immunity?: 

Will SC end personal laws’ immunity?: 

Context

• The Supreme Court’s judgment on the constitutionality of triple talaq may also decide the age-old debate whether personal laws can be brought under the ambit of Article 13.

Argument of All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB)

• While the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) has argued that the Supreme Court does not have jurisdiction to strike down provisions of personal law, organizations calling for reform and Muslim women from various walks of life across the country have urged the court to declare triple talaq and polygamy as “un-Islamic”.
• For the first time that aggrieved persons individual Muslim women themselves have approached the apex court in person to settle the law on whether religious law is immune from constitutional standards enshrined under fundamental rights.
• Article 13 includes in its ambit any “ordinance, order, by-law, rule, regulation, notification and even customs and usages” passed or made by the Legislature or any other “competent authority”.
• It mandates that any law in force in the country before or after the commencement of Constitution should not violate the fundamental rights of citizens enshrined in Part III.
• A judicial declaration from a Constitution Bench under Article 13 that personal laws are liable to comply with the fundamental rights guaranteed by Constitution would bring religious law, even uncodified practices, under judicial review.