A signature campaign of the Travancore Devaswom Board and the Akhila Bharatha Ayyappa Seva Sanghom (ABASS) opposing the plea seeking entry for women of all ages to Sabarimala has evoked good response from Ayyappa devotees, ABASS general secretary N.Velayudhan Nair has said. He told The Hindu that the faithful, including a large number of women, participated in the campaign which began at Sabarimala Sannidhanam on the first day of the Malayalam month of Edavom on Sunday.
Mr. Nair said the Sanghom had already impleaded itself in the case pending before the Supreme Court filed by the Indian Young Lawyers Association protesting against the restriction imposed on women’s entry to Sabarimala.
He said the women devotees who offered prayers at the temple in the past three days condemned the lawyers’ association plea.
Mr. Nair said it was the Kerala High Court that upheld the restriction of entry for women in a particular age group to Sabarimala in 1991.
The Division Bench of the Kerala High Court comprising Justices K.Paripoornan and K.B.Marar had maintained that the restriction imposed by the TDB was only in respect of women of a particular age group and not women as a class.
The then Sabarimala Tantri Kandararu Neelakandararu had asserted before the High Court that women in the age group of 10 to 50 years were prohibited from entering the temple even before 1950s.
ABASS spokesman Thanchavur Damodaran said the sanghom as well as the TDB were duty bound to protect this custom and practice at Sabarimala.. Leaders of the TDB and the ABASS would submit a memorandum, along with one crore signatures, to the President and the Prime Minister in two weeks.
