The court emphasized the wide discretion vested in the court for making orders for maintenance and support of one spouse by the other under S.25 of the Hindu Marriage Act. The court held that an order which subserves the cause of justice between parties in exercise of that discretion cannot be lightly interfered with.

1. The appellant and respondent were husband and wife. The husband filed O.P.No. 22 of 1981 under S.12 (1) (a) of the Hindu Marriage Act, claiming that the marriage was null and void since he was an epileptic and impotent. It was his case that the marriage was not consummated for those reasons. The application was allowed by judgment dated 18-10-1982, The respondent filed an application, I. A. No. 26 of 1983, before the lower court under S.25 of the Hindu Marriage Act, claiming maintenance at the rate of Rs. 300/- per mensem till she remarried. The appellant resisted the application. He contended that the application under S.25 of the Hindu Marriage Act was not maintainable in a case where the marriage itself was declared null and void. He also contended that the respondent, his former wife, was not entitled to any maintenance at all, since the effect of the decree of nullity of marriage was that there never existed any jural relationship between them and they were to be treated as if they were total and absolute strangers. Counsel placed reliance on a number of decisions, in support of the proposition, that maintenance can be granted only in cases where the court by decree dissolves the marriage or directs judicial separation and not in cases where it annuls the marriage as invalid or void altogether.

2. The trial court, however, found that S.25 would be applicable to all cases of disruption of marriage by decree of court, whether it be divorce, dissolution of marriage, judicial separation, or annulment of marriage. On a consideration of the evidence relating to the comparative means of parties, the lower court ordered that the appellant should pay the respondent an amount of Rs. 150/- per month till her death or till she remarries or till the order is otherwise varied or modified.

3. Shri P.N.K. Achan, counsel for the appellant, urged emphatically that the effect of a declaration that the marriage was null and void is as if the spouses were never married at all. He submits that only spouses of disrupted marriages are entitled to claim maintenance and not strangers who were accidentally drawn into a void relationship which had no legal effect.

4. We are not persuaded to accept this submission for more reasons than one. It is not in dispute that the parties were married and that it was a legal and valid marriage at that time and till the court by decree disrupted it. The reason mentioned by the husband in his application for declaring the marriage to be null and void was that he himself was an epileptic and impotent and therefore the marriage could not be consummated. The terms of S.12 (1) (a) of the Act did hot apply to such a situation. It applied only to cases were the petitioning spouse urged that the other spouse was impotent or that for other such reasons comprehended by S.5 (2) of the Act, the marriage was null and void. This aspect would have been very material, had we been considering the correctness of the decree of nullity passed by the trial court. We need not consider this aspect in this case since the subject matter of this appeal is the order granting maintenance.

5. It is not as if epileptics never marry, nor that impotence of one or both the spouses should always lead to declaration of nullity of the martial relationship. In many cases, such relationships endure in spite of unforeseen misfortunes. It is only in very rare and exceptional cases that marriages are disrupted by decree of court, even if one or the other of the invalidating circumstances mentioned in S. S of the Act was present even at the time of the marriage.

6. Had it not been for the intervention of court by decree dated 18-10-1982, the marriage between the parties would have continued. Right of a Hindu wife to be maintained by her husband is a part of our ancient law. It has now acquired statutory recognition under S.18 of the Hindu Adoptions and Maintenance Act. Had the marriage continued it would have continued but for the intervention