The six-month cooling-off period for mutual consent divorce is a vital statutory safeguard for reconciliation. Waiver is an exception requiring proof of exceptional hardship or urgency, not just previous failed mediation. Orders denying such waivers are generally appealable, barring the use of extraordinary supervisory jurisdiction.

JUDGMENT :

JASPREET SINGH, J.

1. Heard learned counsel for the petitioners.

2. By means of the instant petition, the petitioners assail the order dated 07.02.2026, passed by the Family Court in Case No.4208/2025, whereby an application for seeking exemption of the cooling period of six months, as provided under Section 13-B of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 (for short, 'the Act of 1955'), has been rejected.

3. The submission of the learned counsel for the petitioners is that the Family Court has erred in rejecting the application without noticing the fact that all the conditions applicable and necessary for exempting the cooling of period relating to a petition under Section 13-B of the Act of 1955, were duly met.

4. The trial Court upon entertaining the petition under Section 13-B of the Act of 1955 fixed the next date as 27.05.2026 for filing of the second motion. By the very same order, the Family Court directed the parties to appear before the Mediation and Conciliation Centre on 20.01.2026.

5. It is urged that the first and foremost, the parties had already mediated while they were contesting the proceedings under Section 13 of the Act of 1955, but the mediation failed. The petitioners thereafter finding that there was no element of reconciliation and they were also living apart since more than one year, hence, they preferred a petition under Section 13-B of the Act of 1955 for dissolution of their marriage by mutual consent.

6. It is further submitted that once the mediation had failed, it was not open for the Family Court to have directed the parties to undergo the exercise of mediation again while their petition under Section 13-B of the Act of 1955 was pending, hence, prolonging the agony of the petitioners. The Court was required to consider the dictum and the conditions laid down by the Apex Court in Amardeep Singh v. Harveen Kaur , (2017) 8 SCC 746, however, the same was not noticed and the application preferred by the petitioners for seeking exemption of cooling period has been rejected by means of the impugned order dated 07.02.2026, which cannot be sustained and deserves to be set aside.

7. The Court has put a query to the learned counsel for the petitioners to address the Court on the under mentioned two grounds:-

(a) Regarding the availability of statutory remedy of appeal as provided under Section 19 of the Family Courts Act, 1984 (for short, 'the Act of 1984');

(b) What could be the ground upon which the application seeking exemption of cooling period can be made and whether requiring the parties to go for a mediation would stand exempted because, some mediation at some earlier point of time in respect of different set of proceedings had taken place.

8. Learned counsel for the petitioners, at the outset, submitted that since the order dated 07.02.2026 is an interlocutory order, hence, in terms of Section 19(1) of the Act of 1984, the appeal as contemplated would not lie and in such circumstances, a petition under Article 227 of the Constitution of India would be maintainable.

9. Examining the aforesaid submission, insofar as the powers of the Court to entertain and exercise its powers in terms of under Article 227 of the Constitution of India is concerned, the same are very wide, deep and pervasive. The Constitut