Fifty-one women of menstrual age have entered Sabarimala temple since the Supreme Court lifted the bar on the entry of this age group last September, the Kerala government told the apex court Friday but the first ever official record on this set off a controversy.
The apex court, meanwhile, ordered the state government to provide two women in the 10 to 50 year age group who also entered the hilltop shrine round-the-clock foolproof security.
A bench of Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justices L N Rao and Dinesh Maheshwari was hearing a petition of 42-year-old Bindu, a college lecturer and CPI(ML) activist from Kozhikode district's Koyilandy, and Kanakadurga, 44, a civil supplies department employee from Angadipuram in Malappuram, who entered the Sabarimala shrine on January 2.
At the outset, senior advocate Vijay Hansaria, appearing for the CPI(M)-led LDF government told the bench that till now 51 female devotees have entered Sabarimala temple during the ongoing annual pilgrimage season and all of them are being provided adequate security.
"In this regard it is submitted that a total of 7,564 women between the age of 10 and 50 years had registered for darshan and as per the digitally scanned records around 51 women in this group have already visited the shrine and had darshan without any issue," an affidavit of Kerala government given to the court stated.
It is for the first time that the state government has stated that 51 women in the previously barred age group have entered the temple.
But the affidavit triggered a controversy in Kerala after it made public details of the Aadhaar and telephone numbers of the 51 women with one of those mentioned turning out to be a man.
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Showing his ID card, Paranjyothi, a 47-year-old native of Tamil Nadu, whose name appeared in the affidavit, told television channels that he is a male and was wrongly mentioned in the affidavit.
The BJP, the Sabarimala Karma Samiti and the Pandalam royal family, associated with the Lord Ayyappa temple, came down heavily on the state government saying there were discrepancies in the age of the women devotees mentioned in the affidavit.
They alleged that the LDF government was lying in the affidavit.
BJP state President P S Sreedharan Pillai termed the government's affidavit as "the biggest lie of the century."
The Congress also trained its guns on the LDF government, saying the state administration had became "a laughing stock after submitting erroneous and misguiding affidavit."