Earlier last month, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs, examining the three new criminal law Bills set to replace the Indian Penal Code (IPC), Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), and the Indian Evidence Act, recommended the criminalisation of adultery but on gender-neutral lines. This follows almost five years after a five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court unanimously decriminalised adultery in 2018 on several grounds including discrimination.
The new Bills were introduced in the Lok Sabha on August 11 to reform the colonial-era criminal laws now in place and were then referred to a 31-member Parliamentary Standing Committee, headed by BJP MP Brij Lal, for scrutiny. After consulting experts and stakeholders, the Committee adopted its report on the Bills on November 7, with Opposition MPs pointing out several errors and recommending more than 50 changes. In their dissent notes, the Opposition MPs flagged the lack of diversity of the domain expert opinion, questioned the haste with which the new laws are being introduced, and highlighted that the new legislations are ‘largely a copy-paste’ of the existing laws.
The Committee reasoned that adultery be criminalised in a gender-neutral manner on the ground that it is crucial to safeguard the sanctity of the institution of marriage. Opposition MPs have however refuted this claim by underscoring that it is “outdated to raise marriage to the level of a sacrament” and that the State has no business to enter into the private lives of couples and punish the alleged wrongdoer.
