Supreme Court notifies nine-judge Bench for Sabarimala verdict review

The Supreme Court on Saturday (April 4, 2026) notified the nine-judge Bench headed by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant, which is scheduled to hear the Sabarimala review case from April 7.

Besides Chief Justice Kant, the Bench would comprise Justices B.V. Nagarathna, M.M. Sundresh, Ahsanuddin Amanullah, Aravind Kumar, A.G. Masih, R. Mahadevan, Prasanna B. Varale, and Joymalya Bagchi.

The case consists of a series of writ pleas and review petitions based on a 2018 verdict allowing women of menstruating age entry into the Sabarimala Ayyappa temple in Kerala. A nine-judge Bench would be taking up the case for a substantial hearing on the Constitutional questions involved after a hiatus of over six years.

An earlier nine-judge Bench had been constituted in 2019 by then Chief Justice of India Sharad A. Bobde. The hearings before that Bench had to be aborted abruptly due to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Chief Justice Kant is the only remaining serving judge of the previous nine-judge Bench.

The Supreme Court intends to hear and wrap up the case by the end of April. The nine-judge Bench has provided petitioners hearing slots from April 7 to April 9. Those opposing them would be heard from April 14 to April 16. The rejoinder submissions would be heard on April 21, followed by the concluding submissions from the amicus curiae on April 22. Parties have to adhere to the timeline, the court has stressed.

In November 2019, a majority judgment by a five-judge Constitution Bench led by the then Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi had initially referred the Sabarimala review and writ petitions to a seven-judge Bench.

But the 2019 majority judgment did not confine the reference to merely the Sabarimala case. It had taken a wider perspective of the questions of law which touched on the ecclesiastical, including whether religious practices considered essential should be given Constitutional protection, and the extent of judicial intervention in such matters.

The Gogoi Bench had clubbed the Sabarimala case review with other pending petitions concerning other faiths, but posing similar questions of law. These included the right of Muslim women to enter mosques; the right of Parsi women who have married out of their faith to enter their religious place of worship, and the issue of female genital mutilation practised by the Dawoodi Bohra community.

Chief Justice Bobde (as he was then) had constituted a nine-judge Bench, instead of a seven-judge Bench, as it was found necessary to examine a 1954 judgment by a seven-judge Bench in the Shirur Mutt case. Any overturning of the Shirur Mutt case, which had for the first time gone into the issue of ‘essential religious practice’, would require a Bench of larger numerical strength.