Aurangabad: Hc upholds decrease courtroom order ordering girl to pay alimony | Aurangabad Information

AURANGABAD: The Bombay High Court bench in Aurangabad has upheld some orders from a lower court in Nanded which ordered a schoolteacher to pay her estranged husband an interim monthly alimony of Rs 3,000 and ordered her school’s principal to deduct Rs 5,000 from hers Salary every month and have been filing them with the Unpaid Alimony Court since August 2017.
Judge Bharati Dangre of the HC cited Section 25 of the Hindu Marriage Act 1955 and rulings of the Supreme Court from time to time while rejecting a petition filed by the teacher against the lower court’s order. Section 25 of the Act provides that a court may order the defendant to pay alimony and alimony to the claimant gross or monthly or periodically in that amount.
Upon hearing both sides’ objections, Judge Dangre found that “the scope of Section 25 of the Act cannot be restricted by not making it applicable to a husband-wife divorce decree.”
The teacher had contacted the HC challenging two orders issued by the Second Joint Civil Judge of the Higher Division, Nanded, in August 2017 which issued an injunction ordering the payment of a monthly alimony of Rs.3,000 and im December 2019 the school principal where the woman on duty was ordered to deduct Rs 5000 from her monthly salary and send it to the court as she had not paid the provisional alimony since the August 2017 order.
The woman denied that she separated from her husband after marrying in April 1992 and obtained a divorce decree in January 2015. The alimony order was issued much later and cannot be upheld, she claimed.
Judge Dangre, citing Sections 24 and 25 of the Act, ruled: “Reading both provisions together would show that both sections of the Hindu Marriage Act 1955 allow provisions and give the needy spouse a right to claim maintenance either pending, i.e. dependent on the outcome of the litigation) or in the manner of alimony and alimony.”
The bank added: “Since Section 25 must be viewed as a provision for wives/husbands who are indigent, the provisions must be interpreted broadly to salvage the remedies.”
The HC further noted: “The Court is at liberty to decide the husband’s application for monthly maintenance under Section 25 of the 1955 Act by way of final hearing pending the application for interim maintenance under Section 24 of the 1955 Act was rightly maintained by the judge and the husband was entitled to maintenance while the Section 25 proceeding is pending.”