Court trashes Rs 500 divorce maintenance
New Delhi, Jan. 29: All state laws that fix Rs 500 as the upper limit for maintenance of deserted or divorced wives are invalid, the Supreme Court has said, citing a 2001 amendment to a central act.
In a ruling earlier this month, the top court said the amendment to Section 125 CrPC, “which is a central act, by the Code of Criminal Procedure (Amendment) Act, 2001”, had deleted the words “not exceeding five hundred rupees in the whole”.
Since CrPC was a central law, the central amendment would override all state amendments, a bench of Justices Markandey Katju and Gyan Sudha Mishra said.
So, “all state amendments” to Section 125 CrPC, by which a ceiling has been fixed for the “amount of maintenance to be awarded to the wife”, have become “invalid”, the bench said in its January 11, 2011, judgment.
The ruling came on an appeal by Manoj Yadav who had contested a Madhya Pradesh High Court directive to pay Rs 4,000 every month as maintenance to his wife Pushpa alias Kiran Yadav.
A Gwalior family court had on October 4, 2007, granted maintenance of Rs 1,500 every month under CrPC Section 125 to Pushpa, who applied to the high court for enhancement of the amount.
On January 23, 2009, the high court had increased the amount to Rs 4,000 a month with effect from January 1, 2009. Manoj then challenged the amount in the top court.
His lawyer argued that under the state’s 1998 amendment to CrPC Section 125, Pushpa was entitled to a maximum of Rs 3,000.
The Supreme Court rejected this claim, citing a 2004 state amendment that did not fix any upper limit for maintenance. The bench said Parliament had by an amendment removed the Rs 500 clause from the CrPC.
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