Critical Analysis Of The Judicial Trends On Sections 7 & 7a Of The Hindu Marriage Act, 1955
- IJLLR Journal
- Mar 10
- 2 min read
Harushig Ramana V, CHRIST (Deemed to be University), Bangalore
ABSTRACT
The institution of marriage operates in a regressive framework wherein the procedure laid down by the personal laws do not accommodate a pragmatic forum or mechanism to incorporate unconventional or heterodoxic unions. Therefore, the paper titled “Critical Analysis of the Judicial Trends on Sections 7 and 7A of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955” tends to focus on the contemporary or futuristic forms of unions wherein these disaffirm the traditional notion of marriages, that is, through the customary practices regarding solemnization and recognition of marriages. This paper inherently deals with the provisions of Hindu Marriage Act, 1995 as the Hindu law espouses the ceremonial validity of a marriage wherein the law itself prioritizes the rituals over the registration; the non-performance of necessary Shastric or customary ceremonies, whichever are applicable to either party (or both) to the marriage, would render the marriage void and the same leads to difficulty in proving the non-validity of bigamous marriages. These are subsequently evaluated through judicial pronouncements from the standpoint of the functioning of penal provisions concerning bigamy and the legal lacunae, such as, ‘Deviani Achi v. Chidambaram Chettiar, AIR 1954 Mad 65,’ ‘Dolly Rani v. Manish Kumar Chanchal,’ ‘Lingari Obulamma v. L. Venkata Reddy & Ors.’ ‘Priya Bala Ghosh v. Suresh Chandra Ghosh,’ ‘Bhaurao Shankar Lokhande & Anr. v. State of Maharashtra & Anr.,’ and ‘Smt. Laxmi Devi v. Satya Narayan and Ors.’ that have been the foundational interpretations until Section 7-A was enacted. Subsequently, the change even though was not prevalent but some degree of change occurred; but these are subject to jurisdictional limitations, as detailed throughout the paper.
Keywords: Sections 7 & 7A, Solemnization, Ceremonial Validity, Bigamy, Heterodoxic Unions
