A person whose marriage is void ab initio does not have the status of a wife and cannot claim maintenance pendente lite under Section 24 of the Hindu Marriage Act.

, J.

1. For the purpose of deciding this application under Sec.24 of the Hindu Marriage Act (for short the Act), the skeletal necessary facts are that the applicant-respondent sought annulment of marriage with the appellant under Sec.11 of the Act and prayed that marriage of the applicant-respondent with the appellant be declared as nullity as the husband had a living spouse when the respondent was married to him.

2. The trial Court found that the husband was already married; that the marriage was subsisting; and that the spouse was alive at the time of alleged marriage with the applicant-respondent. Thus, the applicants marriage was declared to be void.

3. The appellant has challenged the decree of declaration declaring the marriage to be a nullity in this appeal. The applicant-respondent has preferred an application under Sec.24 of the Act claiming maintenance pendente lite and expenses of the proceedings in this appeal. She claimed herself to be the wife and averred that she bad no independent income sufficient for her support and for necessary expenses in the proceedings. The husband was said to be earning about Rs.2,000/- per month being in service, though the husband has denied the fact contending that he was under suspension and was drawing only subsistence allowance.

4. The husband resisted the application for maintenance on the ground that the maintenance could be granted during the pendency of the proceedings only to the wife. Though the wife has not been defined anywhere in the Act, but in the ordinary parlance and as understood by a common man, wife has a definite connotation of the society. The wife enjoys a particular status in the life of a person. Only a legally married person has a right to claim herself to be the wife of a person. Illegal or void marriage against law cannot confer the status of a wife on a person. The wife does command a respect in the society and is expected to discharge certain social, religious and other obligations. The declaration of marriage being void is not a must The formal declaration need not be there and void marriage cannot be considered to be a void marriage only on the grant of declaration by a Court in a proceeding. Void marriages are void ab initio which means that in the eye of law that marriage has never come into being.

5. Learned counsel for the applicant relied upon Mohinder Kaur V/s. Gobind Singh, 1989 (XII) Marriage Law Journal 429. The law laid down in this judgment is that the proccedings under Sec.24 of the Act are summary proceedings and are intended to give reasonable opportunity of defence to a spouse having no independent income for his or her maintenance. This is an ad hoc interim arrangement. There is no quarrel with the proposition of law laid in this judgment, but it has no applicability to the question to be determined in these proceedings.

6. So far as the precedent cited, reported as Rajinder Kaur alias Parminder Kaur V/s. Attinderjit Singh, 1989 (XII) Marriage Law Journal 371. is concerned, it was observed therein that the relevant consideration for the Court while disposing of the application under Sec.24 of the Act is whether applicant has no independent means sufficient for her support and the Court should not go into veracity of the allegations in the pleadings of the parties at that stage, It was further observed that the pleadings of the parties as well as the findings arrived at cannot be gone into while determining the application under Sec.24 of the Act. Again, the proposition of law laid down in the said judgment is not pari materia on the question to be determined in this case. There can be no gair saying that the relevant consideration is the condition of the spouse having no independent source of income sufficient for his or her support, but at the same time it cannot be ignored that it is only the wife or the husband who can maintain an application under Sec.24 of the Act It has to be determined whether the applicant is wife before