The Special Marriage Act, 1954 mandates the personal appearance of parties before the Marriage Officer for marriage registration, emphasizing the detailed procedure and the importance of authenticity and state certification.

ORDER :

Rajbir Sehrawat, J.

1. This is a petition under Article 226/227 of the Constitution of India praying for issuance of writ in the nature of certiorari to quash the impugned letter/order dated 11.09.2020 (Annexure P-12) issued by the learned Deputy Commissioner-cum-Marriage Officer, Gurugram, whereby; in response to a request made by the petitioners, the above said officer has intimated to them that there was no provision for registration of a marriage under the Special Marriage Act, 1954 (hereinafter referred as 'the Act') without the parties appearing in person before the Marriage Officer; and it has further been intimated that the petitioners may get their marriage registered by being present in the office of the Marriage Officer, Gurugram on any working day.

2. As per the facts pleaded in the writ petition, the petitioner No. 1 is working as IT Consultant with a company named Publicist Sapient in London, United Kingdom since December, 2017. Similarly, petitioner No. 2 is a USA citizen of Indian origin and has been living in United States. She is employed at Virginia University School of Medicine as a Resident Doctor.

3. The petitioners solemnized their marriage on 07.12.2019 according to Hindu Rights and Ceremonies in the presence of their respective families at Gurugram in Haryana. As can be gathered from the facts pleaded in the petition, thereafter, the petitioners returned to their respective work places in United Kingdom and United States on 10.12.2019 and 15.12.2019 respectively. Subsequently, the petitioners applied for registration of their marriage under the Act. For that purpose the petitioners moved an application for registration of their marriage before the Deputy Commissioner-cum-Marriage Officer, Gurugram on 29.01.2020. Since the parties had already left for their respective places, therefore, request was made to the Marriage Officer to permit petitioner No. 2 to appear through video conference for the purpose of moving the application for registration of marriage. Accordingly, the said request was, statedly, permitted by the Marriage Officer and the procedure for registration of the marriage was initiated. However, since the parties were required to be personally present at the time of final stage of registration of the marriage, therefore, the Marriage Officer had informed the parties that their request for video conferencing cannot be acceded to at that stage of proceedings because there was no provision in the Act authorising him to do so. It is against this order that the present writ petition has been preferred by the petitioners.

4. Arguing the case, learned counsel for the petitioners has submitted that after holding enquiry to satisfy himself, the Marriage Officer had called the petitioners to appear before him on 03.04.2020.

5. However, in the meantime, due to spread of COVID-19 Pandemic, the petitioners could not return to India. Even the Government of India had imposed a nationwide lock-down on 24.03.2020. Therefore, the parties could not come to India despite having booked their air tickets. Accordingly, only in the prevalent difficult situation petitioner No. 1 had filed application dated 07.08.2020 before the Marriage Officer making a request that second motion hearing may also be conducted through video conference.

6. However, the said application has wrongly been rejected vide impugned letter/order dated 11.09.2020. The learned counsel has further submitted that petitioner No. 2 is a medical professional and she had been put on COVID-19 emergency duty in United States, therefore, she could not visit India. Still further, it is submitted that even the Government of India has suspended the VISA services. Therefore, petitioner No. 2 could not enter India. Although, petitioner No. 1 could go to United States to meet his wife there, however, even that is dependent upon a condition precedent that petitioner No. 1 shall have to attach a marriage certificate along with an application for obtaining VI