NEW DELHI: If a man and woman, professing same faith or diverse ones, intend to get married under Special Marriage Act, 1954, they are mandated to give 30-day notice, which would be put up in the notice board of Registrar of Marriages, prior to the date of tying the nuptial knot.
This concept of notice period was introduced by British Parliament when it enacted “Act for Better Preventing of Clandestine Marriage, 1753”, which was later superseded by Marriage Act of 1836, which too provided for a minimum 29-day prior notice of marriage. This was incorporated in the SMA, enacted 70-years ago to prevent marriage between already married man/woman, minors, trafficking of women and violation of prohibited degrees of marriage recognised in Indian society.
The notice period, mandated under Section 6 of SMA, was challenged by Athira R Menon through a PIL in the Supreme Court in 2020. The petition was heard and dismissed by a bench of Justices Dinesh Maheshwari and Bela M Trivedi on Aug 29, 2022, saying “We find no reasons to entertain this matter as a PIL at the instance of the petitioner”.
The issue was raised in April 2023 before a five-judge constitution bench led by then CJI D Y Chandrachud during the hearing on a bunch of petitions filed by members of LGBTQ+ community members seeking right to marry. Then CJI had termed the provision ‘patriarchal’. However, when the bench delivered its verdict denying right to marriage to queer couples, it did not even touch the legality of Sec6 of SMA.
Interestingly, another writ petition by Nandini Praveen challenging the validity of Sec 6 of SMA, filed in 2020, is still pending for adjudication in the SC. A bench of CJI S A Bobde, and Justices A S Bopanna and V Ramasubramanian had on Sep 16, 2020 entertained the petition and asked the Union govt to file response to the PIL. Almost five years later, the SC website still shows the PIL as pending for adjudication but does not even indicate a likely date for its hearing.
Section 5 of SMA provides, “When a marriage is intended to be solemnized under this Act, the parties to the marriage shall give notice thereof in writing in the form specified in the Second Schedule to the Marriage Officer of the district in which at least one of the parties to the marriage has resided for a period of not less than thirty days immediately preceding the date on which such notice is given.”
Sec 6 mandates the marriage officer to display the notice in his office after keeping a copy thereof in the Marriage Notice Book, which can be inspected by any person free of charge. If the couple intending to marry are not residing within the jurisdiction of the marriage officer before whom the notice was given, then he would send a copy of the notice to the marriage officer who had jurisdiction over the area where the couple normally reside.
Thus, there is no privacy clause attached to the notices and it can be accessed by all and any at the marriage registrar’s office.
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