( 1 ) (AT the admission state) (Per the Hon ble Sri Justice M. N. Rao) the Appellants are parties to O. P. No. 138 of 1992 on the file of the Principal subordinate Judge, Visakhapatnam. The first appellant, Shri J. Venkata Ramana murthy, is the husband of the Second appellant, Smt. J. Vijaya Lakshmi. On 20th july, 1992, they filed the above original petition under Section 13-B of the Hindu marriage Act praying for a decree of divorce by mutual consent. They also filed an interlocutory application seeking advancement of the case from 20th January, 1993, to which date it was adjourned in the first instance, to 22-7-1992. That request was rejected and aggrieved by that the present appeal is brought jointly.

( 2 ) THE parties were married in 1978 and they have been blessed with three children. In the affidavit filed in support of the original petition in the court below it was averred by the first appellant that misunderstandings arose between them and, therefore, they lived separately since 1986 with a view to patching up their differences. Finally, they agreed to live separately and the wife left the conjugal society of the husband on 13-10-1990. Therefore, they sought the decree for divorce by mutual consent. They wanted waiver of the minimum statutory period of six months enacted in sub-section (2) of Sec. l3-B and that request was rejected by the Court below.

( 3 ) SHRIMATI Prasanna Kumari, learned counsel for the appellants, relying upon the decision of a Division Bench of this Court in K. Om Prakash vs. K. Nalini contends that the statutory time-limit incorporated in Section 13-B (2) cannot fetter the discretion of mis Court to grant a decree under Section 13-B if otherwise, in exercise of its appellate jurisdiction, this Court is satisfied that the parties should not be allowed to bear the agony of living together any further.

( 4 ) THE decision cited has no application to the facts of the present case. In Om prakash Case, the husband filed the petition for dissolution of marriage in the year 1982 and when it was dismissed he preferred an appeal to mis Court when the appeal was pending, bom the wife and husband filed a compromise memo on 12th July, 1985, in this Court praying for a decree for divorce by mutual consent. The question arose whether, in a situation like that, having regard to the long lapse of time between the date of filing of the application for divorce and the date of filing of the compromise memo in this Court, which was more than four years, the statutory time-limit prescribed in Section 13-B (2) should be adhered to? After discussing the intendment of the legislation and stating the factual situation, P. A. Choudary, J. speaking for the Division Bench, held:"according to the literal reading of Section 13-B (2) the courts cannot pass consent decree of divorce beyond 18 months period from the date of its filing. In the event that such an application is filed by the parties and the courts for some reason of human error or failure did not or could not dispose it of within the said period of 18 months, the literal reading of Section 13-B (2) prevents the courts from granting that relief thereafter. Similarly if a petition for divorce by mutual consent is filed before the lower Court and was dismissed by the lower Court for some reason, the appellate Court would be powerless to grant that relief on the basis of the application filed in the lower court because 18 months must have elapsed by the time the matter reached the appellate forum although the parties are still fighting relentlessly in the appellate Court These considerations lead us to hold that it could not have been the intention of Section 13-B (2) mat the appellate Court should always drive the fighting parties to go through the purposeless forms of meaningless ceremony of petitioning again for consent divorce waiting and watching the completion of necessary number of revolutions of this Mother Earth around the unmoving Sun. "the ratio of the above

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