Nikah halala
‘Nikah mutah’, or pleasure marriage, is a temporary marriage contract in which the duration of the union and the mehr (paid at the wedding) is specified and agreed upon in advance. It is a private contract made in a verbal format with some preconditions -- the woman must not be married, she should be “chaste”, “not addicted to fornication” but may not be a virgin. The marriage ends after the specified period is over and the women undergo iddah (a period of abstinence) once the union ends.
In ‘Nikah misyar’, the husband and wife renounce several marital rights, such as living together, the wife’s rights to housing and maintenance money, and the husband’s right to access.
The four petitioners are Sameena Begum and Nafisa Khan, and two men, Moullim Mohsin Bin Hussain Bin Abdad Al Kathiri and Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay.
A bench led by former chief justice JS Khehar had in August 2017 held triple talaq unconstitutional by 3-2 majority. Following the judgment, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government brought The Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Bill, 2017 to criminalise instant triple talaq and give a punishment of up to three years in prison for men who contravened the law. The bill has been passed in the Lok Sabha but it is yet to get a nod in the Rajya Sabha, where the Bjp-led NDA lacks a majority.
On Monday, senior advocate Mohan Parasaran argued on behalf of Upadhyay that a ban on polygamy and other practices was needed to secure basic rights.
Upadhayay has sought a declaration “that the provisions of the IPC are applicable on all Indian citizens and triple talaq is a cruelty under section 498A (husband or relative of the husband subjecting a woman to cruelty) of the IPC, ‘nikah-halala’ is rape under section 375 (rape) of the IPC, and polygamy is an offence under section 494 (marrying again during lifetime of husband or wife) of the IPC.”
One of the petitioners has contended that the law against bigamy has been rendered inapplicable to Muslim women due to polygamy and no criminal complaint can be filed against a husband.
She has sought that the Dissolution of Muslim Marriages Act, 1939, be declared unconstitutional as it violates Articles 14, 15, 21 and 25 (freedom of conscience and free profession, practice and propagation of religion) of the Constitution.
The petition has contended that while the Muslim law allows a man to have multiple wives by way of the temporary marriages or polygamy, the same permissions are not extended to women.
Reacting to the SC order, advocate Karuna Nandy said: “Women’s rights are fundamental. Practices such as nikah halala are brutal. It is, however, troubling to me that Muslim women organisations are not present before the court and that it appears to be two individual Muslim women and one Muslim man and one Hindu Brahmin man. Since the court has agreed to hear this set of petitions, I do hope that several organisations with a diversity of views represent themselves before the court.” found the place to live freely, and to cross and to then hurt others.”
He said terror attacks in Afghanistan had increased after the US announced its South Asia policy. “More terrorist activity has just one message for me personally - to look at this as if (it’s a) no to a call that don’t use terrorism. The ball is in the world community’s court and we have to respond,” he said.
Asked about the Pakistan Army’s demand that Afghanistan “end” India’s influence in the country in return for help in controlling the Taliban, as detailed in Steve Coll’s book Directorate S, Abdali said: “It’s quite distressing to see expectations of this nature from one neighbour to another neighbour…can Pakistan accept, for example, Afghanistan’s demand to cut its ties with China? No way, and we will never ask.”
He added, “We have heard for years a desire that we should have no ties with India. The Afghanistan that I know and belong to will never ever surrender to anyone’s demand of this nature, whether this is vis a vis India or any other nation.” Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi, who said it was the National Democratic Alliance government that was “mocking the right to privacy”.
Earlier on Tuesday, Gandhi made two specific allegations. He first tweeted, “Modi’s Namo App secretly records audio, video, contacts of your friends and family and even tracks your location via GPS. He is the big boss who likes to spy on Indians. Now he wants data on our own children. 13 lakh NCC cadets are being forced to download the app.”
The BJP’S spokesperson Sambit Patra claimed this showed Gandhi as “technologically illiterate”, and there was a difference between analysis and snooping.
Gandhi also alleged that Modi was using his position as prime minister to “build a personal database with data on millions of Indians via the Namo App promoted by government”. He should, the Congress president said, use the official PMO app instead. “This data belongs to India, not Modi.”
A BJP functionary rebutted Gandhi and said that the PM’S personal app was entirely different from the official app. “Not a single penny of government funds go into the Namo App. The PM is extremely careful in all his digital properties to distinguish between the personal and official.”
As the debate over mobile apps and its political use intensified, experts argued that India lacked the legislative framework to seal with it. Pavan Duggal, a cyber security lawyer, said, “India does not have a dedicated legal framework to govern mobile applications. This entire episode is a wake-up call to protect consumers of mobile app service providers, given India does not have a dedicated privacy law.”
The two parties had last week accused each other of using the services of Cambridge Analytica, which has been in the eye of the storm for allegedly mining the data of millions of Facebook users and using it to influence elections in other countries, including the US.