Muslim Women's Maintenance — Constitutional Validity · 28 September 2001
Danial Latifi v. Union of India: Supreme Court Upholds the Muslim Women's Maintenance Act
Supreme Court of India · (2001) 7 SCC 740; AIR 2001 SC 3958
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Following the political and legal controversy that arose after an earlier Supreme Court maintenance ruling involving a Muslim woman, Parliament enacted the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act, 1986, which set out a separate maintenance framework for divorced Muslim women in place of the general provision under Section 125 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. The constitutional validity of the 1986 Act was challenged before a five-judge Constitution Bench as discriminatory and violative of the right to equality and the right to life under Articles 14, 15 and 21.
The Constitution Bench upheld the validity of the 1986 Act but read its central provision — requiring a husband to make "reasonable and fair provision" for his divorced wife within the iddat period — to mean that this provision must be adequate to secure her future maintenance needs, and is not confined only to payments during the iddat period itself. By interpreting the Act in this manner, the Court held it did not fall short of the protection available to women of other faiths under the general law, and reconciled the statute with constitutional guarantees of equality.
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