Brief Facts 

In the instant case of N. Rajeev v. C. Deepa petition expressing his displeasure at the prolonged pending of his marital case, in which he had requested a decision declaring his marriage to be dissolved and invalid. The petitioner’s case has been pending for seven years, and the petitioner’s attorney requested that the court order a prompt resolution, citing the Supreme Court’s recognition of the right to prompt justice as a constitutional protection under Article 21 of the Constitution.

Analysis of Court Order 

According to Justice Krishna S. Dixit of the Karnataka High Court’s Single Judge Bench, marital cases should be fought and resolved on a war footing, at the very least as a concession to the frailty of human life.

The Court ruled that where a marital matter contains a request for the dissolution or nullity of marriage, courts should use every effort to resolve it, ideally within a year, to allow the parties to reorganise their life should the request be granted. The parties to a marital lawsuit suffer highly negative effects from a delay in resolution. With the aforementioned observations, the Court instructed the Family Court Judge to complete the trial and resolve the seven-year-old case, with all contentions maintained open, ideally within a maximum of three months.

The Court further ordered the Registrar General to distribute this judgement to all relevant parties so that subsequent litigants in similar situations won’t needlessly come to this court’s doors asking for guidance on how to quickly resolve their cases.

CASE NAME – N. Rajeev v. C. Deepa, Writ Petition No. 14769 of 2023