Title: Marriage dissolved by panchayats not legal divorce
Posted: Fri Aug 27 2010, 02:45 hrs
New Delhi: Even as the role of khap panchayats in honour killings is under the scanner, the Supreme Court has gone ahead to clip the wings of the village elders by ruling that a marriage dissolved through panchayats does not amount to a legal divorce.
A judgment from a Supreme Court Division Bench of Justices P Sathasivam and B S Chauhan said a divorce got through the panchayat as per the local customs of a particular community will not be recognised by any court of law. A divorce, in order to be legalised, mandatorily requires a judicial decree from a court of law and nothing less would do, the Supreme Court clarified in the judgment dated August 25, 2010, released on Thursday. "Dissolution of marriage through panchayat as per custom prevailing in that area and in that community permitted cannot be a ground for granting divorce under Section 13 of the Act, 1955," the Bench observed.
The judgment gives a second life to the 20-year-old marriage of Mahendra Nath Yadav, an Army man, and his estranged wife Sheela Devi, a teacher, in UP's Varanasi district. Yadav in 1997 decided that a panchayat should be convened as per their local customs to end their marriage as there was "no proper opportunity for both of them to lead a normal family life".
The panchayat, in turn, on June 7, 1997, "divorced" them after deciding that Yadav should pay his wife's family Rs 30,000. Yadav then pressed his wife to move the local family court for a divorce decree. Devi disagreed, but Yadav, undeterred, approached the local court himself. The family court decided in his favour and put a legal stamp on the panchayat's verdict. Devi had approached the Allahabad HC, which promptly dismissed the lower court's decision.
Source:
https://www.indianexpress.com/news/Marriage-dissolved-by-panchayats-not-legal-divorce/673006
