MPSC 2021 Prelims Paper-I · Question 86 of 100

Correct — option (1), 1st August. The law the stem describes is the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Act, 2019, which made the pronouncement of instant triple talaq void and illegal and a punishable offence. Its passage runs across the last week of July 2019: the Lok Sabha passed the Bill on 25 July 2019, the Rajya Sabha on 30 July 2019, and the President gave his assent on 31 July 2019. The statute is deemed to have come into force retrospectively from 19 September 2018, the date of the first of the ordinances that had preceded it, but the Government dates the enactment itself to 1 August 2019, and it is that date which it chose to mark. In 2021 the Government announced that 1 August would be observed as Muslim Women's Rights Day to commemorate the enactment, and the day was observed across the country on 1 August 2021 with ministers meeting women affected by the practice. Since this paper was written on 23 January 2022, the first observance had taken place less than six months earlier, which is exactly the window from which MPSC draws its current-affairs questions. It is worth knowing what the Act does, because the same material is asked in other forms. Any pronouncement of talaq by a Muslim husband upon his wife — spoken, written, in electronic form or in any other manner — is declared void and illegal, and the husband who pronounces it is punishable with imprisonment which may extend to three years and with fine. The offence is cognizable when information is given to the officer in charge of a police station by the married Muslim woman on whom talaq is pronounced or by a person related to her by blood or marriage, and bail may be granted only if the Magistrate is satisfied that there are reasonable grounds, after hearing the wife. The Act also entitles the woman to a subsistence allowance for herself and her dependent children and to the custody of her minor children. It followed the Supreme Court's judgment of August 2017 in Shayara Bano, which had already held instant triple talaq unconstitutional; the Act added the criminal sanction that the judgment did not. The date the question wants is therefore 1 August.

• (2)15th January — 15 January has no connection with the triple talaq law. It is observed in India as Army Day, marking the day in 1949 on which General K. M. Cariappa took over as the first Indian Commander-in-Chief of the Indian Army from the last British holder of that office, and in the middle of January it also falls near the harvest festivals — Makar Sankranti, Pongal and Bhogi. A candidate reaching for it is picking a date he knows is 'a day for something' without being able to say what. The reliable way through a date question of this kind is to work from the event rather than from the calendar: identify the law, place its passage in the last week of July 2019, and only then look for the option that sits beside it. Every other route is guesswork with a quarter-mark penalty attached.
• (3)15th August — 15 August is Independence Day, and it is offered here for the same reason 26 January is — it is one of the two dates every candidate knows, so it captures the answer of somebody who is choosing by familiarity rather than by knowledge. Governments do sometimes attach a commemoration to a national day, which gives the option a surface plausibility, but there is nothing to attach here: the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Act, 2019 has no August 15 milestone at all. Its dates are 25 and 30 July 2019 in the two Houses, 31 July 2019 for the President's assent, 1 August 2019 for the enactment the Government commemorates, and 19 September 2018 for the retrospective commencement carried over from the ordinance.
• (4)26th January — 26 January is Republic Day, the anniversary of the commencement of the Constitution in 1950, and it belongs to no part of this story. It is a strong distractor for a slightly different reason from the other two: a candidate who half-remembers that the day has something to do with rights may connect the Constitution's guarantee of equality with a commemoration of women's rights and pick it. Keep the women-related days of the Indian calendar separate and this cannot happen — National Girl Child Day is 24 January, National Women's Day is 13 February, the birth anniversary of Sarojini Naidu, International Women's Day is 8 March, and Muslim Women's Rights Day is 1 August, the date the Government attaches to the enactment of the 2019 Act.

Talaq-e-biddat, or instant triple talaq, is the pronouncement of divorce three times at one sitting, which under one school of Muslim personal law took effect immediately and irrevocably. It was challenged in Shayara Bano v. Union of India, and in August 2017 a five-judge bench of the Supreme Court set it aside by a majority of three to two. The judgment made the practice legally ineffective but attached no penalty to it, and the Government's position was that pronouncements continued in fact. The response was legislation, first by ordinance from 19 September 2018 and eventually by the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Act, 2019, which does three things: it declares any pronouncement of talaq void and illegal, whether spoken, written, in electronic form or in any other manner; it makes the pronouncement an offence punishable with imprisonment up to three years and with fine; and it creates civil protections in the form of a subsistence allowance for the woman and her dependent children and custody of the minor children. The criminalisation is what made the law controversial. Its supporters argued that a prohibition without a sanction had proved empty; its critics, including more than six hundred and fifty women's rights activists who objected publicly to the commemoration of the day itself, argued that imprisoning a husband does nothing for a wife's maintenance and singles out one community's personal law for criminal treatment. Both arguments are worth knowing, because the Commission occasionally asks about the debate and not merely the date.

MPSC's current-affairs block is drawn from roughly the eighteen months before the paper, and its favourite material is anything that comes with a date attached — a new observance, an anniversary, an award, an appointment, a summit. Observance days are especially common because they are unambiguous and cheap to mark, and because they cluster: a serious candidate keeps a single calendar of national and international days and adds every new one announced during the year. This item is a good example of why the calendar has to be built from the news rather than from an old list, since Muslim Women's Rights Day did not exist before 2021 and would be absent from any compilation printed earlier. The second habit the question rewards is linking a day to the event it commemorates rather than memorising it as a bare date. A candidate who knows that the triple talaq law was passed at the end of July 2019 can reconstruct 1 August without ever having read that the day exists, whereas a candidate who has memorised the date alone loses it as soon as the question is asked in the reverse direction. That reverse form — naming the day and asking what it commemorates, or naming the Act and asking when it took effect — is common enough that the pairing is worth learning in both directions.

• Muslim Women's Rights Day is observed on 1 August. The Government announced the observance in 2021 to commemorate the enactment of the law against instant triple talaq, and the day was observed across the country on 1 August 2021.
• The Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Act, 2019 was passed by the Lok Sabha on 25 July 2019 and the Rajya Sabha on 30 July 2019 and received the President's assent on 31 July 2019; it is deemed to have come into force retrospectively from 19 September 2018, the date of the ordinance that preceded it.
• The Act declares any pronouncement of talaq by a Muslim husband upon his wife — spoken, written, in electronic form or in any other manner — void and illegal, and punishable with imprisonment which may extend to three years and with fine.
• The offence is cognizable when information is given to the officer in charge of a police station by the married Muslim woman on whom talaq is pronounced or by a person related to her by blood or marriage, and bail requires the Magistrate to be satisfied of reasonable grounds after hearing the wife; the Act also provides a subsistence allowance and custody of minor children to the woman.
• The law followed the Supreme Court's judgment of August 2017 in Shayara Bano v. Union of India, which held instant triple talaq unconstitutional but imposed no penalty; the criminal sanction is the Act's own addition, and it is the part of the law that has been publicly contested, including by women's rights groups who objected to the commemorative day.

• Choosing a famous national date such as Independence Day or Republic Day when the observance is unfamiliar. The Commission includes them precisely to collect the guesses of candidates who have not learnt the specific day
• Confusing the day the Government commemorates, 1 August, with the date of the President's assent on 31 July 2019 or the retrospective commencement of 19 September 2018 carried over from the ordinance
• Attributing the criminalisation of instant triple talaq to the Supreme Court. The 2017 judgment struck the practice down; the punishment of up to three years' imprisonment comes from the 2019 Act
• Working from a printed list of national days compiled before the examination year. Muslim Women's Rights Day was announced only in 2021 and appears in no older compilation

Observance days are among the most reliably repeated items in MPSC's current-affairs section, and the Commission asks them in three directions: name the day and ask for the date, name the date and ask what it marks, or embed the date in a stem about a law or a scheme as this question does. The third form is the hardest and the most instructive, because it requires the candidate to identify the underlying event before the date becomes findable, and it therefore rewards linked knowledge rather than a memorised list. Expect also the neighbouring questions that come with any major statute — the year it was passed, the judgment that preceded it, the punishment it prescribes, and the ministry that administers it. For a law as widely reported as this one, the safest preparation is to read the Act's operative provisions once, since a single reading covers the date question, the punishment question and the Shayara Bano question together.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Act, 2019 prescribes which of the following punishments for a husband who pronounces instant triple talaq ?

  • (a)A fine only, with no imprisonment
  • (b)Imprisonment which may extend to three years, and fine
  • (c)Imprisonment for a minimum of seven years
  • (d)No punishment; the pronouncement is merely declared void

  Answer(b) Imprisonment which may extend to three years, and fine. The Act first declares any pronouncement of talaq — spoken, written, in electronic form or in any other manner — void and illegal, and then makes it an offence carrying imprisonment up to three years together with a fine. The offence is cognizable when reported by the woman on whom talaq is pronounced or by a person related to her by blood or marriage, and a Magistrate may grant bail only on reasonable grounds after hearing the wife. Declaring the practice void without any penalty was the position established by the Supreme Court in 2017; the criminal sanction is what the Act added.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  In which of the following cases did the Supreme Court of India hold the practice of instant triple talaq to be unconstitutional ?

  • (a)Mohd. Ahmed Khan v. Shah Bano Begum
  • (b)Danial Latifi v. Union of India
  • (c)Shayara Bano v. Union of India
  • (d)Sarla Mudgal v. Union of India

  Answer(c) Shayara Bano v. Union of India. A five-judge bench decided the case in August 2017 and set aside talaq-e-biddat by a majority of three to two. The judgment made the practice legally ineffective but attached no penalty to it, which is why the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Act, 2019 followed; the Government dates that Act's enactment to 1 August 2019 and observes the day as Muslim Women's Rights Day. The Shah Bano case of 1985 concerned maintenance under the general criminal law and led to the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act, 1986.