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Union minister Nitin Gadkari said live-in relationships are wrong and against the rules of society, while adding that same-sex marriages would lead to the collapse of social structure.
In a podcast on YouTube, Mr Gadkari recalled his visit to the British Parliament, where he was told that the UK's biggest problem was people opting or live-in relationships as opposed to marriage. "If you don't marry, how will you have children? What will be the future of such children? If you go against the societal structure, what impact will it have on people?" he asked.
Mr Gadkari said that the society will ultimately decide its own norms, but emphasised that a balanced sex ratio has to be maintained in the country. "If there are 1,500 women and 1,000 men, we may have to allow men to have two wives," he remarked.
While he denied the need to ban divorces in the "ideal India", the minister reiterated that "live-in relationships are not good".
Mr Gadkari's statement comes a year after a five-judge constitution bench of the Supreme Court refused to grant legal recognition to same-sex marriage but pitched for equal rights to queer people. All judges were unanimous in holding that it was within Parliament's ambit to change the law for validating such union.
Meanwhile, in 2018, five Supreme Court judges overruled the court's own 2013 decision and partially struck down Section 377, a controversial British-era law that banned consensual gay sex.