With the Constitution guaranteeing right to equality, codification of Hindu personal law — part of which is HMA — made men and women equal partners in a marriage.

Equal rights of women in marriage was one of the main considerations for a Bench comprising Justices Pasayat and S H Kapadia to direct all state governments on August 14, 2006, to compulsorily register marriages.

The aim was to make accountable unscrupulous husbands, who after deserting their wives for other women often denied their marriages taking advantage of the absence of documentary proof of their marriage to frustrate court orders directing them to pay alimony to their wives.

Justice Pasayat could not have seriously said that the law enacted to give equal rights to women in marriage had broken more homes, as he was convinced about the utility of having the marriages registered.

The law, thus, was enacted not to break marriages but to crystallise the rights of partners in marriage to help them live with self-respect.

In the older days, a woman married to a schizophrenic used to live on without complaining despite her husband being unable to consummate the marriage.

The fear of taunts from society used to make her swallow the mental torture. In 2006, a Supreme Court Bench comprising Justices Ruma Pal and A R Lakshmanan ruled that abstinence by husbands due to mental disorder was a valid ground for divorce for women.

Source: The Times Of India