Sasidharan Nambiar, J.

1. A learned Single Judge, while considering the question whether a mother could proceed against her daughter under the provisions of the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, taking note of the two decisions of this court in Ramadevi v. State of Kerala (2008(4) K.L.T. 105) and Vijayalekshmi Amma v. Bindu (2010(1) KLT 79), felt that though it was held therein that respondent in a complaint filed under the Act could also be a female person, in view of the proviso to Section 2(q) of the Act, the scope of the proviso is limited to a complaint filed either by the aggrieved wife or a female living in a relationship in the nature of marriage and that aspect was not considered in both the decisions. Hence the following question was referred to a larger Bench for an authoritative pronouncement on “whether the ‘proviso’ in the definition of “Respondent” under Section 2(q) of Protection of Women form Domestic Violence Act (hereinafter referred to as the Act) enables only ‘an aggrieved wife’ or ‘a woman living in a relationship in the nature of marriage’, to proceed against the ‘relative of the husband’ or ‘the male partner’ as a respondent in a procee