Gandhi Slams India Court on Gay Rights in Shift for Ruling Party

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Sonia Gandhi, India’s most powerful politician, criticized a Supreme Court ruling that upheld a 153-year-old colonial-era law criminalizing gay sex and said parliament should introduce a bill to amend the constitution.

The Italy-born Gandhi, president of the ruling Congress party in power since 2004, is “disappointed” with the decision, according to an emailed statement from the party. Yesterday’s judgment reversed a 2009 verdict of the lower Delhi High Court that decriminalized same-sex intercourse between consenting adults in the nation’s capital.