<div><span style="font-size: 1rem;"><b>India’s top court on Tuesday said it cannot legalise same-se* marriages, with the chief justice of the country saying making such a law is the domain of parliament.</b></span><br></div><div><br></div><div>A five-judge bench headed by the Chief Justice of India, D.Y. Chandrachud, heard arguments in the case between April and May this year and pronounced its verdict on Tuesday.</div><div><br></div><div>Chandrachud said there was a degree of “agreement and disagreement on how far we have to go” on same-sex marriages as he began reading his order.</div><div><br></div><div>Two of the other four judges agreed with Chandrachud on the court not legalising same-sex marriages, making it a majority.</div><div><br></div><div>Two other judges are yet to speak.</div><div><br></div><div>The court ruling comes five years after a historic 2018 judgement when the Supreme Court scrapped a colonial-era ban on gay se*.</div><div><br></div><div>Only Taiwan and Nepal allow same-sex unions in Asia, where largely conservative values still dominate politics and society.</div><div><br></div><div>Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government had opposed the petitions, calling them “urban elitist views” and stating that parliament is the right platform to debate and legislate on the matter.</div><div><br></div><div>It had also said that such marriages are not “comparable with the Indian family unit concept of a husband, a wife and children”. - Reuters&nbsp;</div><div><br></div><div>bnbd24/fas</div>