IRRETRIEVABLE BREAKDOWN OF MARRIAGE AS A GROUND FOR DIVORCE: ITS VALIDITY IN TODAY'S INDIAN SOCIETY

When a marriage has completely fallen apart, with no shared life and no real possibility of the two people coming back together, should the law still refuse to end it simply because neither party can prove the other did something wrong? This is the question at the centre of the debate around irretrievable breakdown of marriage as a ground for divorce in India. The doctrine asks not who was at fault, but whether the marriage still exists as a living reality or has become an empty legal status. Despite being recommended by the Law Commission of India in 1978 and again in 2009, and despite the Marriage Laws (Amendment) Bill of 2010 coming close to passing, irretrievable breakdown has never been written into the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 or the Special Marriage Act, 1954. Courts, particularly the Supreme Court, have stepped in to fill this gap through Article 142 of the Constitution, most significantly in the 2023 Constitution Bench judgment in Shilpa Sailesh v. Varun Sreenivasan, which confirmed that the Court can dissolve a marriage on this ground even without mutual consent. But relief under Article 142 is available only at the Supreme Court level, making it inaccessible to most people. This paper argues that the case for Parliamentary action is now stronger than ever. Indian society has changed considerably since 1955, with rising divorce rates in urban areas, growing financial independence among women, and a clear shift away from the idea that a broken marriage must be preserved at all costs. The main objection, that the provision could be misused to abandon economically dependent wives, is serious but answerable through strong maintenance provisions and judicial safeguards. Keeping people locked in marriages that exist only on paper is not a protection of the institution; it is a quiet form of cruelty that the law should no longer be willing to impose.