The Sabarimala 9-Judge Bench Of April 2026: Rewriting The Essential Religious Practices Test For All Of India

Introduction: The Moment India’s Religion-Law Relationship Gets Renegotiated

On February 17, 2026, a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court comprising Chief Justice Surya Kant, Justice Joymalya Bagchi, and Justice Vipul M. Pancholi issued a procedural order setting in motion what may become the most consequential constitutional adjudication on religion in independent India [1]. The Court directed that a nine-judge Constitution Bench would commence hearings from April 7, 2026, to conclusively determine seven questions about the scope of religious freedom under the Constitution — questions that have festered, unresolved, for over six years. The matter arises from a batch of 66 petitions tagged to the review of the Supreme Court’s September 28, 2018 judgment in Indian Young Lawyers Association v. State of Kerala, (2018) 10 SCC 689, which had struck down the exclusion of women of menstruating age from the Sabarimala temple in Kerala.

The April 2026 hearings are not merely a second look at who can enter a single hill-shrine. They represent a structured judicial effort to revisit, and perhaps fundamentally reconstitute, the Essential Religious Practices (ERP) test — the tool that courts use to decide which religious customs deserve constitutional protection and which do not. That test, born in 1954 and applied inconsistently for seven decades, is finally being subjected to the scrutiny of the largest bench ever assembled in India for a religion-law question. The outcome will affect not just Hindus at Sabarimala, but Muslim women seeking entry into mosques and dargahs, Parsi women married outside the community who have been barred from Agyaris (fire temples), and the Dawoodi Bohra community’s contested practice of female genital mutilation — all of which are tagged to this reference [1].

The Origins of the ERP Test: The Shirur Mutt Case and the Doctrine of Essentiality

To understand why April 2026 matters, one must begin in 1954. In Commissioner, Hindu Religious Endowments, Madras v. Sri Lakshmindra Thirtha Swamiar of Sri Shirur Mutt, AIR 1954 SC 282 [2], a seven-judge bench of the Supreme Court confronted the Madras Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Act, 1951, which gave state authorities sweeping powers over the management and finances of Hindu religious institutions. The Shirur Mutt — one of the eight Udupi maths founded by Shri Madhvacharya — challenged this Act as a violation of the constitutional guarantees of religious freedom.

Justice B.K. Mukherjea, writing for the bench, formulated what became the cornerstone of Indian religious liberty jurisprudence. He held that “what constitutes the essential part of a religion is primarily to be ascertained with reference to the doctrines of that religion itself.” The court further drew a clear distinction between the religious and the secular, observing that “what Article 25(2)(a) contemplates is not regulation by the State of religious practices as such, the freedom of which is guaranteed by the Constitution except when they run counter to public order, health and morality, but regulation of activities which are economic, commercial or political in their character though they are associated with religious practices.” This formulation — handed down almost as an aside in a case about institutional finance — became the essential religious practices test: courts would look into religious doctrine and decide which practices were “integral” enough to deserve constitutional shelter.

Seven years later, in Durgah Committee, Ajmer v. Syed Hussain Ali, 1961 AIR 1402 [3], the Supreme Court applied the ERP doctrine in a Muslim context while cautioning against treating every observed practice as automatically essential. The bench noted that practices of a merely “accretive or historical character” — not rooted in the core tenets of the faith — would not be entitled to the protection that Articles 25 and 26 of the Constitution of India provide. In doing so, the court introduced a tension it had not resolved: if judges themselves must decide what is “essential” to a religion, are they doing law or theology? This unresolved conflict between the Shirur Mutt approach and the Durgah Committee caution is one of the formal legal questions now before the April 2026 nine-judge bench [8].

The Legal Framework: Articles 25, 26, and the Kerala Legislation

The constitutional provisions at the heart of this reference are Articles 25 and 26 of the Constitution of India. Article 25(1) provides that “subject to public order, morality and health and to the other provisions of this Part, all persons are equally entitled to freedom of conscience and the right freely to profess, practise and propagate religion.” Article 25(2) carves out the state’s authority to regulate “economic, financial, political or other secular activity” associated with religious practice and, under sub-clause (b), to make laws providing for “social welfare and reform or the throwing open of Hindu religious institutions of a public character to all classes and sections of Hindus.”

Article 26 operates at the collective level. It provides that “subject to public order, morality and health, every religious denomination or any section thereof shall have the right — (a) to establish and maintain institutions for religious and charitable purposes; (b) to manage its own affairs in matters of religion; (c) to own and acquire movable and immovable property; and (d) to administer such property in accordance with law.” The phrase “manage its own affairs in matters of religion” is where the real tension lives, because what counts as “matters of religion” is precisely what the essential religious practices test is supposed to determine.

At the statutory level, the Kerala Hindu Places of Public Worship (Authorisation of Entry) Act, 1965, mandates that Hindu places of public worship shall be open to all sections and classes of Hindus. Rule 3(b) of the Kerala Hindu Places of Public Worship (Authorisation of Entry) Rules, 1965, however, permitted the exclusion of women between the ages of 10 and 50 years from the Sabarimala temple on the basis of customary practice. The constitutional validity of Rule 3(b) formed the immediate trigger for the 2018 litigation, and the majority declared it unconstitutional as violating Articles 25(1) and 15(1) of the Constitution [4].

The 2018 Sabarimala Judgment: The Constitution Bench’s Holdings

In Indian Young Lawyers Association v. State of Kerala, (2018) 10 SCC 689 [4], a five-judge Constitution Bench held by a majority of 4:1 that the exclusion of women aged 10 to 50 years from the Sabarimala temple was unconstitutional. Chief Justice Dipak Misra, along with Justices R.F. Nariman, A.M. Khanwilkar, and D.Y. Chandrachud, held that the exclusionary practice did not constitute an “essential religious practice” under Article 25 and therefore could not be shielded from constitutional scrutiny. The majority further held that the devotees of Lord Ayyappa did not constitute a separate “religious denomination” within the meaning of Article 26 — meaning the Travancore Devaswom Board could not claim the denominational autonomy that Article 26(b) guarantees to manage religious affairs internally.

Applying the essential religious practices test, the majority concluded that there was no scriptural or theological basis establishing the exclusion of women as a core requirement of Ayyappa worship. It declared that “devotion cannot be subjected to gender discrimination” and struck down Rule 3(b) of the 1965 Rules as violative of Articles 25(1) and 15(1). Justice Chandrachud went further in his concurring opinion, characterising the exclusion as a form of untouchability prohibited under Article 17. Justice Indu Malhotra — the sole dissent and the only woman on the bench — disagreed fundamentally. She held that the devotees of Lord Ayyappa did satisfy the criteria for a religious denomination under Article 26, that the exclusion was a protected internal matter of religious practice, and that courts in a secular democracy should not pronounce on what is rational or necessary within a faith’s own theology.

The judgment triggered widespread protests across Kerala. Over 50 review petitions were filed in the Supreme Court by Kantaru Rajeevaru and others, challenging the majority’s application of the essential religious practices test as an overreach into territory that belongs to religious communities and their own doctrinal authorities [4].

From Review to Reference: The 2019 and 2020 Orders That Created the Nine-Judge Reference

In November 2019, the five-judge review bench led by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi — in Kantaru Rajeevaru v. Indian Young Lawyers Association [5] — issued a majority order by 3:2 referring the review petitions to a larger bench. The majority reasoned that the questions about the interplay between Articles 25 and 26, and the scope of the essential religious practices test, required authoritative resolution by a bench larger than seven judges. Three other pending disputes were tagged: petitions about Muslim women’s entry into mosques and dargahs, Parsi women married to non-Parsis seeking entry into Agyaris, and the challenge to female genital mutilation in the Dawoodi Bohra community. The 2019 order did not stay the 2018 judgment — the temple technically remained open to women of all ages — but kept the review petitions alive [5].

On February 10, 2020, a nine-judge bench constituted under Chief Justice S.A. Bobde — comprising Justices R. Banumathi, Ashok Bhushan, L. Nageswara Rao, Mohan M. Shantanagoudar, S. Abdul Nazeer, R. Subhash Reddy, B.R. Gavai, and Surya Kant (now Chief Justice of India) — upheld the maintainability of the reference [5]. The bench formally framed seven questions for determination: (1) the scope and ambit of the right to freedom of religion under Article 25; (2) the interplay between Article 25 rights of persons and Article 26 rights of denominations; (3) whether Article 26 rights are subject to provisions of Part III beyond public order, morality, and health; (4) the scope and extent of the word “morality” in Articles 25 and 26 — and whether it means “constitutional morality”; (5) the extent of judicial review of religious practice under Article 25; (6) the meaning of “sections of Hindus” in Article 25(2)(b); and (7) whether a person outside a religious denomination can challenge its internal practices through a PIL. The 2020 bench then became dysfunctional — eight of its nine members retired before arguments could begin — and the matter lay dormant for six years [5][9].

April 2026: The Bench, the Schedule, and the Stakes

The February 2026 order provides for hearings beginning at 10:30 AM on April 7, 2026 [1][6]. Parties supporting the review of the 2018 judgment — including the Central Government, which through Solicitor General Tushar Mehta supported the review petitioners — are to be heard from April 7 to April 9. Parties opposing the review will argue from April 14 to April 16. Rejoinders are fixed for April 21, and the amicus curiae, Senior Advocate K. Parameshwar, is to make concluding submissions on April 22. All parties were directed to file written submissions before March 14, 2026. The final composition of the new nine-judge bench is to be notified separately through an administrative order of the Chief Justice [7].

The Central Government’s position in favour of review is politically and constitutionally significant. It signals federal executive alignment with those who argue that courts have overstepped in applying the ERP test to override a community’s own understanding of its theology. Whether the bench agrees — and how it balances judicial deference to religious communities against the Constitution’s equality guarantees — is the central question April 2026 will force it to answer.

The Seven Questions and Why Each One Matters

The seven questions framed in February 2020 are not merely academic. Each maps onto live controversies in how Indian courts have regulated religion, gender, and state power for seven decades. The first two questions — the individual scope of Article 25 and its interplay with Article 26 — go to the foundational architecture of religious freedom in India. The Constitution’s framers deliberately distinguished individual religious liberty from collective denominational autonomy, but seventy-five years of case law have produced a jurisprudence without a clear governing principle for when one overrides the other.

The fourth question on “constitutional morality” is the most philosophically charged. The 2018 majority, particularly Justice Chandrachud, argued that the “morality” in Articles 25 and 26 must mean constitutional morality — the values embedded in Part III — not the popular or religious morality of a community. This reasoning was deployed both in the triple talaq case of Shayara Bano v. Union of India, (2017) 9 SCC 1, and in the Sabarimala majority. If the nine-judge bench accepts this reading, it will fundamentally alter every religion-related claim: the constitutional text becomes the supreme arbiter of what a community may or may not practise. If it rejects this reading and holds that “morality” in Articles 25 and 26 retains a religious or community-specific meaning, courts would be required to show far greater deference to the internal norms of religious groups.

The seventh question — on standing in PIL — directly interrogates who gets to litigate religion before the Supreme Court. In the Sabarimala case, the petitioning lawyers’ association was not a body of Ayyappa devotees. If the nine-judge bench answers this question restrictively, it would significantly narrow access to courts in religion-related constitutional challenges going forward [8].

Implications Beyond Sabarimala: A Pan-India Reckoning

Because 66 matters across faiths are tagged to this reference, the April 2026 bench is conducting, in effect, a constitutional audit of gender-based religious exclusions across India. The Dawoodi Bohra case on female genital mutilation raises the question of whether the essential religious practices test can be used to invalidate a practice that involves bodily harm even when a community insists it is religiously mandated. The Muslim women’s mosque-entry petitions ask whether the Sabarimala reasoning on gender discrimination extends to non-Hindu religious contexts. The Parsi Agyari case raises questions about a demographically small community seeking to enforce an exclusion tied simultaneously to its ethnic and religious identity.

None of these disputes can be resolved without first settling what the ERP test actually requires. A stricter test — demanding textual and scriptural proof of essentiality — would likely invalidate many of these exclusions. A more deferential test — accepting a community’s own account of what is theologically essential — would likely protect many of them. The April 2026 bench must supply doctrine where there has been, for decades, only case-specific improvisation [8][9].

Conclusion: A Doctrine Sixty Years in the Making

Seven decades of the Essential Religious Practices Test have produced a jurisprudence that is simultaneously powerful and internally incoherent. Courts have used it to abolish instant triple talaq, to allow women into temples, to regulate temple archakas, and to limit public processions of certain sects — all in the name of deciding what is “essential” to a religion, which is a question most theologians would regard as beyond judicial competence. The April 2026 nine-judge bench offers the Supreme Court a rare opportunity to bring principled coherence to this domain: to draw defensible lines between constitutional review and theological intrusion, and to finally answer the question that Shirur Mutt opened in 1954 and Sabarimala reopened in 2018. When religion and constitutional rights collide in India, which framework governs — and how? The hearings begin April 7, 2026.

References

[1] Supreme Court Observer, “Sabarimala Review | Nine-judge Bench to commence arguments from 7 April 2026” (February 2026) — https://www.scobserver.in/reports/sabarimala-review-nine-judge-bench-to-commence-arguments-from-7-april-2026/

[2] Indian Kanoon, Commissioner, Hindu Religious Endowments, Madras v. Sri Lakshmindra Thirtha Swamiar of Sri Shirur Mutt, AIR 1954 SC 282 — https://indiankanoon.org/doc/1430396/

[3] Indian Kanoon, The Durgah Committee, Ajmer v. Syed Hussain Ali and Others, 1961 AIR 1402 — https://indiankanoon.org/doc/1262157/

[4] Indian Kanoon, Indian Young Lawyers Association v. State of Kerala, W.P.(C) No. 373 of 2006 (decided 28 September 2018) — https://indiankanoon.org/doc/163639357/

[5] Indian Kanoon, Kantaru Rajeevaru v. Indian Young Lawyers Association, R.P.(C) No. 3358/2018, Order dated 10 February 2020 — https://indiankanoon.org/doc/125326128/

[6] Bar and Bench, “Supreme Court 9-Judge Bench to Hear Sabarimala Reference from April 7” (February 2026) — https://www.barandbench.com/news/litigation/supreme-court-9-judge-bench-to-hear-sabarimala-reference-from-april-7

[7] Live Law, “Supreme Court Sets Sabarimala Reference for Hearing from April 7 before 9-Judge Bench” (February 2026) — https://www.livelaw.in/top-stories/supreme-court-sabarimala-review-9-judge-bench-reference-dawoodi-bohra-parsi-muslim-women-entry-dargah-fire-temple-523254

[8] Supreme Court Observer, “Essential Religious Practices: Court in Review” (October 2023) — https://www.scobserver.in/journal/essential-religious-practices-court-in-review/

[9] Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas & Co, Case Note — Kantaru Rajeevaru v. Indian Young Lawyers Association (11 May 2020) — https://www.amsshardul.com/insight/constitutional-law/