On Monday, February 16, 2026, the Supreme Court scheduled hearings on the review and writ petitions related to its September 2018 ruling that permitted women of menstruating age to enter the Sabarimala temple in Kerala. These will be heard before a nine-judge Constitution Bench starting April 7, 2026. The Bench is headed by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant, the only remaining judge from the original nine-judge Bench. The court noted that the maintainability of these review petitions was already decided in 2019 by then Chief Justice Sharad A. Bobde’s Bench. However, the hearings were halted mid-way due to the COVID pandemic. The hearing timeline set by the Supreme Court is tight. The review petitioners will be heard from April 7 to April 9. Those opposing them will present arguments from April 14 to April 16. Rejoinders will be heard on April 21, and the amicus curiae will make concluding submissions on April 22. The Court stressed that all parties must stick to this schedule. Back in November 2019, a five-judge Bench led by then Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi referred over 60 review and writ petitions against the 2018 verdict to a larger seven-judge Bench. That 2019 judgment also linked related petitions about essential religious practices, including Muslim women’s entry to mosques, Parsi women's access to religious spaces after interfaith marriages, and female genital mutilation in the Dawoodi Bohra community. The 2019 ruling outlined key legal questions on whether essential religious practices deserve constitutional protection and the judiciary’s role in such matters. The nine-judge Bench will also revisit a 1954 seven-judge ruling (Shirur Mutt case) which first defined "essential religious practices". This earlier ruling stated, "what constitutes the essential part of a religion is primarily to be ascertained with reference to the doctrines of that religion itself." This marks the Supreme Court’s first detailed hearing on this sensitive issue in nearly five years following the pandemic pause.