Citing ‘The Protection of Domestic Violence Act 2005’, the SHRC said that “relationship in the nature of marriage,” was legally recognised in 2005 but there is still no law on it.The Rajasthan State Human Right Commission (SHRC) on Wednesday equated the life of a woman in a live-in relationship with a “concubine” while asking the state government to bring in a law against live-in relationships.
The order by SHRC chairperson Prakash Chandra Tatia, the former Chief Justice of Jharkhand High Court, and SHRC member Mahesh Chandra Sharma, a former Rajasthan High Court judge, said that “Right to Life” in Article 21 of the Indian Constitution translates into “an honourable life, not an animal-like life.”
“From no viewpoint can a concubine-like life of a woman be called a dignified life.Hence, for a woman to sacrifice her honourable life and adopt a dishonourable life in the form of a concubine, is not right to life. By demanding such a life, women can’t protect their fundamental rights,” the SHRC said.
SHRC delivered the judgment after two women had approached it in 2017 regarding a live-in relationship. To protect their privacy, details of their cases were not disclosed in the order.
Citing ‘The Protection of Domestic Violence Act 2005’, the SHRC said that “relationship in the nature of marriage,” was legally recognised in 2005 but there is still no law on it. Hence, the SHRC asks the state government that “a self-contained law on relationship in the nature of marriage be formulated” and lists seven points – including mandatory registration of live-in relationships —in a bid to assist the government to formulate such a law, while copying its order to Rajasthan Chief Secretary and others.
It said that an “intense awareness campaign” is required to inform women to stay away from live-in relationships.
Kavita Srivastava, Rajasthan president of People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) said it is, “an extremely retrograde judgment, which needs to be condemned and advocated against. We can challenge it in the Rajasthan High Court.”
In 2017, Tatia had called live-in relationships “social terrorism”, saying the institution was infecting society. He said the status of women “abandoned” from a live-in relationship was “worse than divorced women” adding that, “without notice (people) start living in with someone else, this is infecting the society.”
