SC sets aside instant triple talaq in split...

All political parties and leaders from minority communities welcomed the apex court order, including Kapil Sibal, the lawyer for the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) which argued against judicial intervention in triple talaq. Sibal said, “We hail the judgment. It protects personal laws and at the same time deprecates the practice of triple talaq.”

Former chief election commissioner SY Qureishi said, “AIMPLB lost an opportunity to introduce this reform itself.”

Congress party leader and senior lawyer P Chidambaram said the judgment was a resounding affirmation of gender justice and of equality of spouses. “Triple talaqwas a distortion of original Quranic legal principles. Good it has been declared unconstitutional,” he said. Justice Kurian Joseph, in his separate judgment along with the majority, stated that the practice of triple talaq did not have the protection of Article 25 of the Constitution guaranteeing freedom of religion. “Merely because a practice has continued for long, that itself cannot make it valid if it has been expressly declared to be impermissible.” He also underlined that the court cannot direct lawmakers to pass a legislation.

The common judgment of Justice Nariman and Justice Lalit stated, after quoting religious texts and scholarly interpretations, that triple talaqwas “an irregular and heretical form of talaq”. Muslim theologists themselves have dubbed it as sinful, inviting the wrath of god.

The bench heard seven appeals including of those women who were divorced on phone, by speedpost or electronic methods. Breaking the norm, the bench had heard the case during the vacation. The judges — Chief Justice Khehar, Justice Kurian Joseph, Justice Rohinton Nariman, Justice Uday Lalit and Justice S Abdul Nazeer--belonged to five different religious strains. There was no woman though. It was a 400page judgment, the longest being that of the dissenters.

The All-India Muslim Personal Law Board had vehemently opposed the court interfering in the personal law of Muslims. The husbands had questioned the maintainability of the writ petitions as the issues were not justiciable. The court rejected their objections. The Modi government, through the Attorney General and other law officers, had supported the cause of the Muslim women. Prime Minister Narendra Modi as well as BJP President Amit Shah hailed the order. Shah said it was not “a matter of winning and losing”. But, sources said the party was likely to make this the main point of campaign in the general elections of 2019.

However, community leaders made it clear that it would be extremely difficult to implement. “We have to respect the judgment. It is going to be a great Herculean task to implement this on ground”, said Majlis e Ittehadul Muslimeen leader Asaduddin Owaisi. Member of the AIMPLB, Zafaryab Jilani said: “We have respected SC’s judgments in the past, today’s judgement on Triple Talaq will also be considered by us”.