Supreme Court Decides Not To Rule On Personal Law

The Supreme Court has declared categorically that it will not interfere in the personal laws of the Hindus, Muslims or Christians nor will it ask the Union government to pass a uniform civil code for all communities. The court stated in a judgment this week that these are matters which should be considered by the law-makers. Those who think that the laws are inequitable should knock at the doors of Parliament. Courts are not the right forum for this.

The judgment was delivered by Chief Justice A M Ahmadi, Justice Sujata Manohar and Justice K Venkataswami. Three omnibus petitions challenging the personal laws were filed by different national organisations.

 

The Ahmedabad Womens Action Group challenged polygamy in the Muslim community and several legislations affecting the Muslim community including the one which nullified the 1985 Shah Bano judgment, denying maintenance to divorced Muslim women. Lok Seva Sangh pointed out discrimination against women in the Hindu Succession Act and the laws regarding Hindu adoption and maintenance. The Young Womens Christian Association challenged the validity of the Indian Divorce Act and other matrimonial laws covering Christians passed in the last century.

The judges dismissed all the petitions, asserting that the matters raised in those petitions should be dealt with by the legislature, and not by the courts. Moroever, all these issues have been dealt with in various earlier judgments by the Supreme Court.

The judgment profusely quoted from such rulings. The apex court explained that the 1995 judgment delivered by Justice Kuldip Singh (now retired) calling upon the government to pass a uniform civil code has no binding force.

This is because the two-judge division bench which delivered the judgment (Sarla Mudgal vs Union of India) was not directly dealing with the issue. The real question before it was whether a Hindu husband can convert to Islam and marry again.

Therefore the observations of one judge on the common code had not mandatory force. Nor were the two judges unanimous in their call.

The other judge, Justice R M Sahai, wrote that the time was not ripe for a uniform civil code, and it was for the Law Commission to move towards that goal set by the Constitution.

Further, Justice Kuldip Singh did not take into acount the previous judgments which had dealt with the issue of the common code. Several leading judgments had left the matter to the law-makers, Justice Venkataswami, who wrote the present judgment, emphasised.