MST KALAWATI Vs. B RATAN CHAND

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Shrimati Kalawati instituted a suit against her husband, Ratanchand, for past and future maintenance on the allegation that he has married again. He admitted his second marriage with Shrimati Chameli in 1935 but disclaimed his liability. The trial Court decreed the claim only for future maintenance at Rs. 25 per mensem in view of the Hindu Married Women's Right to Separate Residence and Maintenance Act, 1946. Ratanchand also lost in the lower appellate Court, and he then filed a second appeal in this Court. His principal submission that the plaintiff could not get the benefit of the said Act because he had remarried before its commencement found favour with the learned Single Judge, who dismissed the plaintiff's suit.

(2.) Aggrieved by the judgment of the learned Judge the plaintiff preferred the present appeal on the ground that the learned Judge's view was erroneous. Learned counsel for the plaintiff has however asked us to permit him to abandon that ground of attack, and raise a new point not taken in the memorandum of the appeal. He submits that the plaintiff is now entitled to maintenance under Section 18 of the Hindu Adoptions and Maintenance Act (Act LXXVIII of 1956), which came in force on 22-12-1956, and that her suit for future maintenance should therefore be decreed at Rs. 25 per month from that date onward. We have permitted him to rely on the new statute, since it came into existence after the filing of the special appeal. The rule that the court of appeal may consider a supervening statute in a proper case in now firmly established (See G. T. M. Kotturuswami v. Setra Veeravva, AIR 1959 SC 577), and learned counsel for the defendant has indeed, and we think very properly, not questioned our power to do so.

(3.) Section 18 of the 1956 statute, in so far as it is pertinent in this appeal, is as under :