KOONGARAN MUKUNDAN Vs. THAMARAVALAPPIL NALINI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) These two second appeals, which remain unnumbered, because the common appellant contests the demand for larger court fee made by the taxing officer, relate to orders on applications under S.10A and 10B of the Madras Marumakkathayam Act, 1933 whereunder, the respondent wife, who was sought to be divorced by the husband, claimed successfully, maintenance pendente lite under S.10A, and later, maintenance till remarriage under S.10B of the Act. Appeals were carried against both the orders, but in vain, and now the husband, or rather the exhusband, divorce having been ordered, comes up in second appeal challenging the order passed against him under the aforesaid provisions of the Madras Marumakkathayam Act, 1933.

(2.) These court fee references, I may state right at the beginning, have to be viewed against the constitutional perspective of equal access to courts for all alike which is restricted by the requirement that a pursuit of legal remedies will be conditional on first paying a fee which may be heavy.

(3.) If court fee -- an onerous sum in this case -- is leviable from the husband, it will be equally leviable from the wife who, destitute and divorced, seeks payment of maintenance from her husband and may well be rebuffed at the outset by a demand of fee for the very institution of the claim; and in many cases this may amount to denial of relief to the down and out divorcee and thus an indirect violation of the rule of law in its larger connotation. A beneficent bit of social legislation would thus be muted and the law in the books fail when it comes to law in the courts!