Thursday 24 October 2013
Monday 7 October 2013
Friday 19 July 2013
Thursday 27 June 2013
Tuesday 11 June 2013
Letter to Ministers - Marriage Laws(Amendment) Bill,2010
Subject: Marriage Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2010.
Reference: Group of Ministers (GoM) regarding Official amendments to the Marriage
Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2010.
Respected Sir,
Reasons and negative consequences of passing this law are as follows:
1. Marriage forms the very foundation of Indian social system. Without the basis of the institution of marriage, a society cannot exist and will hence, have no civilization. The proposed Marriage Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2010 devastates the sacred foundation of a marriage. This Bill is against the principles of Natural Justice and is against the very tenants of justice system envisaged by Indian Constitution. The amendments which are against the principles of natural justice and the Indian Constitution are as under:-
a) Clause 13D: An irretrievable break-down of marriage concept that has been introduced in clause 13C which states that if the marriage is broken down for over 3 years,then divorce may be granted. The divorce petition can be challenged in clause 13D only if the respondent is a 'Female'. This is a gender biased clause and prone to misuse as we have seen in the DV Act and section 498A of the IPC.
b) Clause 28B: The 'Female' has been given sole right to oppose the decree of divorce. This is a gender biased clause and does not fit well with our gender neutral society.
c) Property Rights: The bill proposes to divide the ancestral and personal property of the husband equally with the wife. This recommendation is against the constitution and promotes parasitism. Article 300A of the constitution read with the Supreme Court judgement 'Maneka Gandhi v/s Union of India', states that no person should be deprived from their property without offering a reasonable compensation. In the current provision, the state envisages to unjustly, unfairly and in an unreasonable manner deprive the husband of his property. Not even that the state also plans to legislates to deprive the family members of the husband viz. brother, father, grandfather of their property (ie ancestral property) who have 'No Bearing' to the matrimonial relation of the husband.
d) All laws should be gender neutral. It is requested to replace the word “husband” with the word “spouse” in all laws related to marriage issues.
2. It is humbly requested before the state to rollback the above three amendments in the bill. The ideology of passing the bill was to remove any undue hardships of the ladies at the time of divorce. My humble submission is that ladies have various maintenance clauses in the Hindu Marriage Act and CrPC viz section 24 and 125 respectively. Further, they can apply for interim maintenance during the pendency of the divorce proceedings. Any further, clauses for unjust division of property will cause undue hardships on the husband and his entire family. We have seen how other gender biased laws such as IPC 498A and DV Act have been highly misused by women in the past and even the Supreme Court termed “IPC 498A” as legal terrorism.
3. In the newly proposed bill, a woman can get divorce easily and she will walk away with half of the husband’s property – including property earned before marriage, after marriage, inherited property and inheritable property. The money and assets earned by your family on hardwork may be lost to some women who have been married to your sons or grand-sons. You will realize it only when you have to part with 50% of your property to the divorce initiated by your wives or daughters-in-law. Already many of our Ministers, Members of Parliament (MPs) and Members of Legislative Assembly (MLAs) are hit by the false and forged cases filed by their wives or daughters-in-law.
4. The newly proposed bill will encourage money motivated women prompted by their unscrupulous families to go for divorce at anytime and will destabilize the family systems in the country.
5. Even if a wife decides to go for divorce immediately after marriage, still she gets half of the husband’s property as no minimum time is mentioned to make her eligible for husband’s or his parent’s property.
6. In India, the suicide rate of married men is higher than women due to marital problems and then created financial liabilities (Citation: National Crime Records Bureau). This new law without vision and by not analysing the future implications will create a situation where divorcing men have no other choice other than to commit suicides. This law will create ageing parents of husband/senior citizens lose their homes, making them depressed and even commit suicides.
7. In modern India, most of the ladies are able bodies, well educated and can maintain themselves. We have ladies like Smt.Indira Gandhi, Smt.Kalpana Chawla, Dr. Kiran Bedi, Smt. P.T. Usha etc, etc... Gender biased laws does not serve the purpose of promoting gender neutrality. It has also been seen that in Class 10th and 12th Board exams, University Exams and Professional exams it is the ladies who have the highest qualifying marks and the highest pass percentages. Even, the current year's UPSC civil services exam topper was a lady.
8. The Government shall uphold the Indian constitution on Gender Equality for men and women. But this new law will cause negative reputation to India as a nation for having laws that are not based on equal civil rights for men and women. This is not good for future generations also.
9. Due to the above cited reasons, it is humbly requested to you not to promote 'Parasitism' by passing such laws which will have an effect of reducing the total output of the Indian economy and axing the very foundation of the family system and culture of India.
Thanking you,
Yours faithfully,
G Mohanan Pillai
General Secretary
Friday 31 May 2013
Women using rape laws for vengeance : Delhi high court
NEW DELHI: For the third time in less than a week, the Delhi high court has decried that rape laws are often misused by women.
Flagging the issue in a judgment on Saturday, Justice Kailash Gambhir said rape cases are being used as "a weapon for vengeance and vendetta" to harass and even force a boy to marry.
While granting anticipatory bail to a man facing rape charges from a woman claiming to be his wife, HC added that in many cases woman first has consensual sex but later files rape case against her boyfriend when the relationship breaks up in order to force him to get married, making not only "mockery" of the marriage but also inflating the statistics of rape cases.
"Many of the cases are being reported by those women who have consensual physical relationship with a man but when the relationship breaks due to one reason or the other, the women use the law as a weapon for vengeance and personal vendetta to extort money and sometimes even to force the boy to get married to her," HC said advocating extreme caution to judges who should "cautiously examine the intentions of the girl to find out whether the rape complaint is genuine or has malafide motives".
Earlier this week, Justice G P Mittal and Justice Suresh Kait in separate judgments quashed FIR's relating to rape of a minor and gang-rape of a private executive respectively, after they found too many discrepancies or contradictions in victims' statements. The common theme in all three judgments was the advice to courts not to get swayed by mere allegations of rape, howsoever heinous, but sift through evidence before convicting anyone.
Justice Gambhir, while dealing with the anticipatory bail plea pointed out that for a period of more than two years, the woman enjoyed physical intimacy with the boy. She lodged an FIR alleging rape only when he spurned her offer of marriage when she took help of the police to forcibly marry him even though the marriage was never consummated, as per the FIR.
In her complaint, she justified the delay on the grounds she was threatened and blackmailed by the boy and his kin to keep quiet otherwise she might have been killed. Being the victim of such a reprehensible crime, one should lodge a complaint immediately, or within a reasonable period of time unless there are sufficient reasons to explain the long delay, the court said.
"Delay in lodging an FIR, in such like cases can ultimately diminish the chances of conviction, as due to such delay, the medical evidence and the other circumstantial evidence may rarely be available to support the case of prosecution," it said.
While acknowledging there is a manifold increase in the crime concerning rapes, HC said all the rape cases which are filed have their "own individual story and factual matrix". It agreed most of the cases may be genuine, wherein the girl is a victim of the horrifying crime, or has been forced, blackmailed, threatened to enter into physical relationship with a male on the false pretext of marriage with the sole intent to physically exploit the girl "but there may be cases where both persons out of their own will and choice, develop a physical relationship".
Sunday 31 March 2013
Thursday 28 March 2013
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