The much-debated Triple Talaq Bill will be tabled in the Rajya Sabha on Friday a day after the Union Cabinet approved an amendment to the bill.
On Thursday, the Cabinet proposed three changes in the Muslim Women Protection of Rights on Marriage Bill, 2017. First, only the victim, a blood relation or relation by marriage are allowed to lodge FIR in the case, second, the case can be dropped if husband and wife agree to settle their differences and third, a magistrate can grant bail to men found guilty of giving instant triple talaq to their wives. However, the offence still remains non-bailable.
If the amended Bill is passed in the upper house, it will go back to Lok Sabha for approval of the amendments.
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On December 29, the Lok Sabha passed the original Bill which seeks to make instant triple talaq a criminal offence, a day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government tabled it in the lower house. But it got stuck in the Rajya Sabha where the BJP-led national coalition NDA is in minority.
The Bill proposes a three-year jail term for a Muslim man who divorces his wife in any form of spoken, written or by electronic means such as email, SMS or WhatsApp.
Triple talaq, or verbal divorce, is practiced by a section in the Muslim community to instantly divorce their wives by uttering ‘talaq’ three times.
The government hopes that the tweaks cleared by the cabinet would persuade some non-NDA parties – Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik’s Biju Janata Dal and the AIADMK which have 22 seats in the upper house – to support the bill in its new form.
When Lok Sabha debated the bill last year, both had abstained from voting.
However, on Thursday, the two parties supported lawmaker Harivansh, a first-time lawmaker backed by the BJP-national coalition, who won the Rajya Sabha deputy chairman election.Triple