Supreme Court seeks three rights panels' views on Talaq-e-Hasan plea

NEW DELHI: Supreme Court on Monday sought views of National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), National Commission for Women (NCW) and National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) on petitions by nine Muslim women challenging the validity of Talaq-e-Hasan , which enables a Muslim man to unilaterally divorce his wife by pronouncing talaq once a month for three consecutive months.

Eight years after a constitution bench struck down the practice of triple talaq (Talaq-e-Bidat) or instant divorce by a Muslim man by orally pronouncing 'talaq' thrice in one go, a bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi took up the petitions, six of them filed in 2022 and the rest in 2023, challenging the validity of Talaq-e-Hasan mode of divorce.

While allowing all intervention applications, the bench gave liberty to parties to file authoritative sources from books or scriptures to substantiate their pleas. "We feel that opinions of NHRC, NCW and NCPCR should be placed before the court for assistance in adjudicating these petitions," it said, requesting additional solicitor general K M Nataraj to bring on record the views of these national bodies.

When senior advocate M R Shamshad termed that these are Sharia law practices, being part of the religious law, and whose reforms should be left to the community and not be regulated by courts, advocate Ashwini Upadhyay said SC had in 2017 struck down triple talaq despite identical arguments advanced in support of it.

The bench asked Nataraj to place the views of the national bodies before the SC in four weeks and posted the matter for hearing on November 19.