New Delhi, Dec. 16: The Supreme Court will decide if a husband can withdraw his consent for divorce after agreeing to it under the Hindu Marriage Act.
The court today issued notices to the Centre on a petition that challenged Section 13B of the act which says both spouses have to give their consent twice for a divorce decree to be granted.
Under the law, both spouses have to file for divorce together in a district court after living separately for a year. They have to return to the court after six months — the period given for reconciliation — to say if they still want to go ahead with the divorce or give their marriage another try. If the petition is not withdrawn, the court concerned can grant divorce.
Smriti Shinde’s plea in the apex court is against this “two-stage” consent.
Smriti, daughter of power minister Sushil Kumar Shinde, and Sanjay Pahariya married in 1993. The couple, who have two children, started living separately since 2005, and filed for divorce in 2007.
A trial court granted her divorce after her husband did not appear in court several times. But on June 5, 2008, Bombay High Court overturned the decree on the ground that it was an ex-parte order — passed without hearing the husband — and that his absence should be treated as withdrawal of consent for divorce.
Smriti moved the apex court against the high court judgment but her appeal fell through. She has now sought an order to scrap that part of the law that makes the second consent for divorce a must.
“The law cannot compel a woman, who is emotionally and mentally unable to cope with a marriage, to remain bound in wedlock to her spouse, even when they have lived apart for a year and thereby it is established that the marriage is dead,” she said in her petition.
She said if the right of a woman to get a divorce decree was subject to her husband’s consent, even after the husband had accepted that the marriage had irretrievably broken down, it amounted to violation of constitutional rights.
In India, Smriti said, once a woman files for divorce, she has to undergo considerable social opprobrium.
