SC TO EXAMINE VALIDITY OF POLYGAMY, NIKAH HALALA

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to determine whether polygamy, ‘nikah halala’, ‘nikah mutah’ and ‘nikah misyar’, prevalent among some Muslims, are unconstitutional and sought a response from the Centre on four petitions that asked these practices to be declared as discriminatory against women.

As requested by the counsel appearing for the petitioners, which include two women who say they are victims of these practices, a bench led by Chief Justice Dipak Misra referred the matter to a Constitution bench.

It was argued by the lawyers that the seven-month-old judgment that struck down the practice of instant triple talaq had kept open the issue of polygamy and nikah halala.

While polygamy allows a Muslim man to have four wives at the same time, ‘nikah halala’ is a process in which a Muslim woman has to marry another person, consummate the marriage and then get divorced from him, before being allowed to remarry her husband who had divorced her.

‘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.