The BJP government at the Center has finally managed to pass the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Act, 2019 better known as the triple talaq bill, which it has been trying for many years. This bill has been passes twice in the Lok Sabha (in December 2017 and December 2018), but it failed to get passed on both occasions from Rajya Sabha because of the absence of a majority of the ruling party in the Rajya Sabha. This time too apparently it seemed that this bill would not get cleared from Rajya Sabha, but to the astonishment of all, the ruling party faced no hurdles in getting this bill approved from the Rajya Sabha this time. The manner in which the members of parliament were horse traded and the political parties changed sides will be considered black chapter in the history of Indian parliament. The seriousness of the matter is also aggravated because the game played in the Parliament in this regard was related to an issue which enjoyed constitutional protection and this conspiracy of the MPs not only made it an illegal act but also a criminal one. This whole drama which was played to pass the triple talaq bill has made a mockery of dignified democratic institutions such as the Constitution and Parliament, and has posed question marks over their sovereignty. Now, after the assent of President of India, this Act has become law.

The issue of triple talaq was earlier declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of India, and now by passage of the bill in the Parliament, it has been declared a criminal act. We have analyzed the verdict of the Supreme Court in detail in the previous issues of Tameer-e-Fikr (Jul-Oct 2017 & Nov-Dec 2017), in which we tried to answer academically all the objections raised by the Supreme Court on the validity of the triple talaq in Islam. Had the Muslim parties properly followed the suit in the Supreme Court, it could have yielded a different outcome. But now the time seems has gone out of our hands in this regard.

As far as the parliamentary bill is concerned, it not only contradicts the fundamental constitutional rights but it is also a combination of discrepancies. We have elaborated the deficiencies and contrdictions of this Act and its contradictions in the previous issues of Tameer-e-Fikr (Jan- Feb 2018 and Nov-Dec 2018). A brief account of this is given below:

1. This Act is an arbitrary interference in the Muslim Personal Law, so it is against the constitutional protection.
2. This Act criminalizes a civil matter.
3. This Act not only prohibits triple talaq, but also prohibits all the types of instant talaqs, including divorce obtained by the mutual consent of the husband and wife and and khula, a type of divorce in which a wife seeks divorce from her husband.
4. When the Supreme Court has declared triple talaq as unconstitutional and nullified it, i.e., the utterance of triple talaq at once won’t happen than why punish on a sin that didn’t occur as promulgated by this Act?
5. Another contention of this Act is that it has put the responsibility of maintenance on the offender of triple talaq himself despite awarding him an imprisonment for three years.
6. According to reports, after the passage of the triple talaq bill, a triple talaq victim was burned alive by her in-laws upon her complaint in the police. It is feared that the pandemic of killing brides that is prevalent in other societies today might spread to the Muslims society too.
   
   In India today, the issue of abandoned women (women who have left by their husbands without legal divorce) is the biggest and more serious issue than the issue of triple talaq. The number of abandoned women in the country is 23 lakh which is approximately two and half times the number of divorced women as per last census. According to the Census of the 2011, there were about 9 lakh divorced women in India, while the number of abandoned women is 23 lakh. The majority of these abandoned women are Hindus (almost 20 lakh), while the government does not have any statistics on the number of women affected by the triple talaq. Therefore, the attitude of the government here is akin to stealing eyes from real problems and making a mountain out of a molehill.
   
   To sum up, there are sufficient legal grounds to challenge this Act in the Supreme Court, and if the case is followed properly, then this law can be made a part of the history.