India's Supreme Court refuses to legalise same sex marriage

India's top court rejected to legalise same-sex marriage and left it to parliament to decide, agreeing with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government that the legislature is the right forum to rule on the contentious issue.

The five-judge bench came to a decision on Tuesday. The ruling came as a major disappointment to the huge LGBTQ community, five years after the court scrapped a colonial-era ban on gay sex.

Modi's nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) administration had opposed petitions to the court on the issue, saying same-sex marriage is not "comparable with the Indian family unit concept of a husband, a wife and children".

The court hearing came after more than a dozen petitions filed since last year. The bench, headed by Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, heard arguments in April and May and pronounced its verdict on Tuesday.

The Chief Justice stated: "The court, in the exercise of the power of judicial review, must steer clear of matters, particularly those impinging on policy, which fall in the legislative domain,"

Chandrachud continued to explain that the state should provide some legal protections to same-sex unions, arguing that denying them “benefits and services” granted to heterosexual couples violates their fundamental rights.

One of the three other judges, Ravindra Bhat claimed: "Marriage is a social institution. The marital status is not conferred by the state," Bhat continued, "the idea of marriage is not a fundamental right."