{"id":146796,"date":"1974-07-04T00:00:00","date_gmt":"1974-07-03T18:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.legalindia.com\/judgments\/soumyanarayanan-vs-jayalakshmi-ammal-on-4-july-1974"},"modified":"2016-10-22T07:33:18","modified_gmt":"2016-10-22T02:03:18","slug":"soumyanarayanan-vs-jayalakshmi-ammal-on-4-july-1974","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.legalindia.com\/judgments\/soumyanarayanan-vs-jayalakshmi-ammal-on-4-july-1974","title":{"rendered":"Soumyanarayanan vs Jayalakshmi Ammal on 4 July, 1974"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"docsource_main\">Madras High Court<\/div>\n<div class=\"doc_title\">Soumyanarayanan vs Jayalakshmi Ammal on 4 July, 1974<\/div>\n<div class=\"doc_citations\">Equivalent citations: AIR 1975 Mad 196<\/div>\n<div class=\"doc_author\">Author: Kailasam<\/div>\n<div class=\"doc_bench\">Bench: Kailasam, Varadarajan<\/div>\n<\/p>\n<pre><\/pre>\n<p>JUDGMENT<\/p>\n<p> Kailasam, J. <\/p>\n<p> 1. The husband against whom an order for maintenance has been passed on a petition presented by the wife, who succeeded in her petition for annulment of the marriage, is the appellant. The marriage was annulled by a decree on a petition filed by the wife on the ground that the husband was impotent from the date of the marriage. Subsequent to the annulment of the marriage, the wife filed a petition for maintenance under Section 25 of the Hindu Marriage Act. The maintenance was ordered.\n<\/p>\n<p> 2. The point that has been taken by the learned counsel appearing for the husband is that Section 25 of the Hindu Marriage Act is not applicable to a marriage which has been annulled by a decree of nullity and which thereby becomes void, for, according to the learned counsel, a void marriage never existed, at all. The learned counsel further contends that the jurisdiction of the Court under Section 25 of the Hindu Marriage Act is limited only to marriages which are voidable and not void ab initio. Section 25(1) of the Hindu Marriage Act, provides:&#8211;\n<\/p>\n<p>  &#8220;Any court exercising jurisdiction  under this   Act   may,   at  the  time  of   passing   any decree or at any time subsequent thereto, on application   made  to  it  for   the  purpose   by either  the  wife or  the  husband  as  the  case may be, order that the respondent shall, while the applicant remains unmarried, pay to the applicant for her or his maintenance&#8230;..&#8221;\n<\/p>\n<p> Therefore, an application under Section 25 is maintainable before any court exercising jurisdiction under the Act, and that application may be filed at the time of passing of any decree or at any time subsequent thereto. The section is wide enough to enable the court exercising Jurisdiction under the Act, that is, under any of the provisions of the Act. Section 12 relates to annulment of a marriage by a decree of nullity on the ground that the respondent was impotent at the time of the marriage. When a court passes an order under Section 12(1) of the Act, it is certainly an order passed in exercise of its jurisdiction under the Act. Therefore, there is very little force in the contention of the learned counsel for the appellant that it is a void marriage and that the provisions of Section 25(J) enabling the wife to get maintenance till her remarriage would not be applicable. Void marriages are referred to in Section 11 of the Act. Under that section, a marriage will be declared null and void by a decree of nullity, if it contravenes any one of the conditions specified in Clauses (i), jiv), and (v) of Section 5 of the Act. Clause (i) of Section 5 relates to cases where a party has a spouse living at the time of the marriage; Clause (iv) relates to marriages within the prohibited degrees of relationship; and Clause (v) relates to marriages between sapin-das, which are prohibited. None of these<\/p>\n<p>clauses are applicable to the present case. So, the provision relating to void marriages will not apply. Annulment of a marriage by a decree of nullity on the ground of impotency at the time of marriage is stated to be voidable under Section 12(1) of the Act The learned counsel is therefore not right in calling the present marriage as a void mar-jriage. Further, Section 25 does not refer to jany re-marriage at all. Even if the learned counsel&#8217;s contention is accepted and the mar-riage is treated as void and it is further held that there was no marriage at all, still there can be no objection under Section 25(1) of the Act to grant maintenance so long as the wife remains unmarried.\n<\/p>\n<p> We feel that this appeal is totally devoid of merits. It is accordingly dismissed with costs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Madras High Court Soumyanarayanan vs Jayalakshmi Ammal on 4 July, 1974 Equivalent citations: AIR 1975 Mad 196 Author: Kailasam Bench: Kailasam, Varadarajan JUDGMENT Kailasam, J. 1. The husband against whom an order for maintenance has been passed on a petition presented by the wife, who succeeded in her petition for annulment of the marriage, is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-146796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-high-court","category-madras-high-court"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Soumyanarayanan vs Jayalakshmi Ammal on 4 July, 1974 - Free Judgements of Supreme Court &amp; High Court | Legal India<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.legalindia.com\/judgments\/soumyanarayanan-vs-jayalakshmi-ammal-on-4-july-1974\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Soumyanarayanan vs Jayalakshmi Ammal on 4 July, 1974 - Free Judgements of Supreme Court &amp; 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