Jayamala welcomes SC views on Sabarimala temple

Women and Child Development Minister Jayamala on Wednesday welcomed the observation of the Supreme Court that a woman has a constitutional right to pray at a temple and does not depend on laws.

The apex court had made the observation while hearing a bunch of petitions challenging the traditional ban on the entry of women between 10 and 50 years of age in Sabarimala temple.

“It is going to be a historic judgement. The Constitution does not discriminate between women and men. There cannot be temples only for men and only for women,” Jayamala told reporters in Bengaluru.

Discriminating worship on the basis of sex is wrong, she said and added that she is a staunch devotee of Lord Ayyappa, the deity at Sabarimala.

In 2010, the crime branch of Kerala police had chargesheeted Jayamala for “violating religious practice” after she went on record stating that she had set her foot into the temple in 1986, when she was 27.

"We are all children in the eyes of God. Nobody can come in between God and devotees," Jayamala said.