The Supreme Court on Wednesday issued “great caution” notices of twin PILs seeking uniform grounds for divorce and child support and child support payments to women in all religions. The PILs were submitted by attorney and BJP leader Ashwini Upadhyay.
A bank, run by CJI SA Bobde, sent communications to the central government’s Department of Justice in order to obtain a formal response to the pleas in the petition. The two pleas were argued by senior supporters Pinky Anand and Meenakshi Arora.
The CJI was concerned about the collective prayers made in the petition and wondered aloud whether the court could enter the area without stepping on the personal laws of various communities. Finally, he issued notices on the pleas.
The petitions sought to eliminate irregularities in all existing divorce, alimony and alimony laws and to standardize them for all citizens without discrimination based on religion, race, caste, gender or place of birth.
“How can we eliminate discriminatory practices without interfering with personal laws,” the CJI asked at first. Senior attorney Pinky Anand previously referred to cases where the court intervened to bring down Triple Talaq.
For her part, Arora argued that the maintenance of Muslim women was only limited until the Biddat period. “Women have nothing left,” she said. She advocated uniform regulations for women in all religions. The CJI said it was cautiously issuing a notice.
Personal laws are a politically sensitive issue in the country. Currently, the reasons women divorce and get divorced vary from religion to religion as they are subject to personal laws that govern their own religions.
The only secular law in the country that recognizes marriages and divorces between religions and caste, the Special Marriage Act, has few takers as the fairer Indian inheritance law applies to all marriages registered under the law.
Although a unified civil code for all religions was called for and several court rulings actually suggested that parliament should enact a law, this goal was only gradually achieved. Politically, however, it remains a valued goal of the ruling BJP in the center. In the case of the Triple Talaq, too, the central government had supported the position that Triple Talaq should be put down. The government had passed a similar law in parliament.
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