Senior BJP Leader Arun Jaitley has said that he does not think homosexuality is criminal. In an interaction with students of the Delhi Shri Ram College of Commerce on an NDTV show, Jaitley said that he tends to agree with the verdict of the Delhi High Court which had decriminalized homosexuality in 2009.
Answering a question posed by a student on the views of BJP on Section 377 among other contentious issues, Jaitley said that the BJP has not had any collective internal discussion on this matter and leaders have expressed only their individual opinions. He said that he knows of people in the BJP who have views different from what had been expressed publicly by the party, and that his individual view is that the Delhi High Court had given a correct judgement.
BJP Chief Rajnath Singh, in a statement soon after the Supreme Court verdict re-instating Section 377, had said that his party believed homosexuality to be ‘unnatural’ and hence ‘unambiguously’ endorsed the SC verdict. The RSS mouthpiece had also backed the SC verdict. Most senior BJP party leaders however, have maintained a studied silence on the issue, including their Prime Ministerial aspirant Narendra Modi, not choosing to articulate their views before the media.