The law providing for compulsory registration of marriages solemnised under any religion in India is a step away from enactment but is liable to judicial scrutiny after it gets enacted. The Rajya Sabha yesterday passed by voice vote The Registration of Births and Deaths (Amendment) Bill 2012, reported the Business Standard. The Supreme Court has however directed that the government place the enacted law before the court for scrutiny.

The bill, under which unregistered marriages are not void but attract a penalty of Rs 50, according to PRS Legislative, was tabled in the parliament by former law minister Salman Khurshid last year pursuant to the Supreme Court’s (SC) year 2006 directions in the case of Seema V Ashwini Kumar.

In the 2006 decision, the SC had held:

“We are of the view that marriages of all persons who are citizens of India belonging to various religions should be made compulsorily registrable in their respective States, where the marriage is solemnized.

Accordingly, we direct the States and the Central Government to take the following steps:

[…](iii) As and when the Central Government enacts a comprehensive statute, the same shall be placed before this Court for scrutiny. […]”

Law minister Kapil Sibal, who moved the bill for consideration and passing yesterday, would prefer a review of the 2006 judgment. He told the Times of India:

“The Supreme Court had rendered this judgment in 2006 that the law once passed in Parliament must be placed before the court for scrutiny. We are not entirely happy with this direction...We will be filing a review petition. This part of judgment should be expunged.”

Marriages registered under the Anand Marriage Act, state laws or any other existing law are not required to be registered under the Bill. The SC’s 2006 decision stated that Bombay, Karnataka, Himachal Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh already had marriage registration laws in general while Assam, Bihar, West Bengal, Orissa and Meghalaya had made provisions for voluntary registration of Muslim marriages. In Uttar Pradesh the rural Panchayats compulsorily registered marriages, while registration of marriages was also compulsory for Christians and Parsis.

For Hindus registration was voluntary.

The amendment bill will benefit women as the registration certificate would provide evidentiary value in matrimonial and maintenance cases, for age of the parties to a marriage, custody of children, and the rights of children born out of wedlock, reported IBNLive.