 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today, we are going to talk about the issue of triple talak and to discuss the matter with us, we have women's right activist Kirti Singh. Welcome to our show, ma'am. So, after the recent judgment by Supreme Court, what is the status of triple talak in the country? Triple talak has been declared invalid because of the Supreme Court judgment. As you probably know, three out of five judges have held that it's invalid. So, the status of triple talak is that it is no longer recognized by the law. So, if it is not recognized by the law, if the Supreme Court has already said it's unconstitutional, then why the need for a new law? Well, actually we needed a law to strengthen Muslim women's rights. We needed a law in terms of the Shamimara judgment of the Supreme Court, in which they said that there should be, even with the other forms of talak, which are also unilateral, that there should be arbitration from both sides, from both the husband and the wife side. And it's only after the arbitration is carried out that the talak can be finalized. And it was very important during the arbitration to not only see that if the parties could live together and to see that there is some reason for this divorce, some legitimate reason, but also to ensure that the women's rights and the children's rights within the marriage are given, because if the talak takes place in three months after the arbitration process and then she has to go to the court, that means she'll be taking much longer for her to get maintenance or child custody rights of her children and so on, then it would, you know, to get the divorce. So the wife should be entitled to custody, according to the law, to maintenance, and to a share in the property. And ideally it should be 50% of whatever the parties have built up together in the household. The law should start recognizing the productive nature of household work and the care work that the woman puts in, even if she's not working. If she's working, then it should obviously recognize that she has contributed in all kinds of way, both in looking after the household, the children, the elderly, and by putting in money. So the new draft, which the government has, is supposed to introduce in the parliament in this session, so do you think that draft actually address all these issues that you have spoken about? Not at all. It doesn't. In fact, it takes the law backward and I will tell you why in a minute. But before that, I will say that personally, I'm against criminalization of the law. I'm against the husband being sent to prison. And if he is guilty of cruelty, then we have a section in the Indian Penal Code, section 498A of the IPC, under which the wife can apply, any wife can apply. So we have that. And of course, so there's no need to have an extra provision for sending him to jail. However, a lot of people have expressed that there should be consequences. Why is it that, you know, this triple Pallak is continuing and deliberately continuing in many instances. These people are openly flouting the law. Of course, then they are in contempt of the Supreme Court judgment. But apart from that, they also need to be, people have said there should be consequences. And I think those consequences should be properly worked out. The consequences should be that the person can be fined, for instance, for doing this. And we need to think about this seriously. But simultaneously, I think people need to be told that this is now outlawed. There should be awareness about the judgment. And you know, anybody who encourages this kind of practice, perhaps should be punished like the Kazis and others involved in encouragement and openly defying the Supreme Court verdict. So coming back to the issues that you talked about, what should be in the new law? So do you think this new bill has the government even has the will to include all these issues in the law? The bill, unfortunately, shows that it doesn't have any. In fact, it is taking, for instance, not only does it criminalize the pronouncement of triple Pallak by imprisonment up to three years. And then it sort of blindly says that it's invalid of no, you know, and of no consequence. But one of the things that I've noticed is that it says that there should be the wife should get a subsistence allowance from her husband. Now, why talk of subsistence allowance if she's entitled to maintenance? She's entitled to maintenance according to the law of the land, according to the status of the parties. I don't understand how the law can just speak of a subsistence allowance, which is taking the law backward, which means the woman should not be entitled to maintenance, you know, according to the status of the husband or what he is earning or how they were living together, but just amount that should be just merely sufficient for her to. So that is a very retrogressive provision. That's one. The second is that if you send really the husband to the jail, obviously the maintenance will be affected, you know. And then if the husband is sitting in jail, I don't know whether the wife and the child can receive maintenance at all. I mean, forget the subsistence allowance thing. So I don't think it is. I think it's a rather scrappy bill. It's not being well thought out at all. And the government really needs to rethink. We have demanded that the bill be sent to the Standing Committee of the Parliament, and that all be all, you know, that there should be extensive public discussion on it, and all concerned parties should go in front of the Standing Committee and be able to put point of view through. So that is what I think. I think it's being sought to be passed in a very undemocratic manner. And the government had said that they will have discussion, but there's been no discussion. Thank you so much for sharing your views on the issue with us.