Court to Haryana officials: Don’t create hurdles in interfaith marriages
CHANDIGARH: The Punjab and Haryana High Court has asked the Haryana government not to create hurdles in interfaith marriages, saying some of the information sought under the state’s rules violated privacy.
The court’s order came on a petition against a ‘checklist’ framed by the state government, one of whose provisions required informing a couple’s parents about the marriage.
A Hindu woman and a Muslim man had sought directions from the court to the Gurugram district marriage officer not to send notices of the intended marriage to their parents. The couple also wanted the court to stop the officer from publishing anything on the marriage in a national newspaper, as demanded under the checklist. The notices to the parents impinged on their right to privacy, the couple argued.
The court has suggested that the state government should modify and simplify its court marriage check list to ensure “minimal executive interference”. The court said the procedure must reflect “the mindset of the changed times in a secular nation” instead of the “officialdom raising eyebrows and laying snares and landmines beneath the sacrosanct feet of the Special Marriage Act, 1954”.
In his July 20 order, Justice Rajiv Narain Raina said the Haryana checklist for the registration of marriages should be brought in line with the Act, “avoiding unwarranted overload of obstructions and superfluity”.
The woman’s petition said she faces virulent opposition to the proposed marriage from her parents. The counsel for the petitioners had argued that the CMCL directives are “highly offensive, insensitive, arbitrary, primitive and out of sync with the rapidly changing social order”.
The court directed the officer not to send advance notices to the couple’s parents so as to strictly maintain their privacy rights and their right to life and liberty.
The Gurugram deputy commissioner informed the high court that no officials are asked to visit the houses of the couples for verification.