Interim Maintenance Too Must Be Granted From Date Of Application: Allahabad High Court; Decries Delays In Deciding Cases

The Court emphasized that pendency of the proceedings in Court, without any order in favor of the litigant, should not be to the disadvantage of the litigant. It added that, as with the final maintenance orders, interim maintenance too, must also be granted from the date of filing the application.

The observation was made by a Bench of Justice Rajiv Lochan Shukla while allowing an application filed under Section 528 BNSS by the applicant-wife, Sonam Yadav.

It was Yadav's grievance that the Principal Judge, Family Court, Kaushambi, had granted her interim maintenance only from the date of the court order (April 3, 2025), rather than from the date she had filed the application (August 5, 2024).

Her counsel, Advocate Rajiv Sawhney, relied on the Supreme Court's judgment in Rajnesh vs. Neha (2021), arguing that the Apex Court had settled the law that maintenance should normally be awarded from the date of the application.

On the other hand, the counsel for the husband (Opposite Party No. 2) argued that the directions in Rajnesh v. Neha apply to final orders of maintenance and did not extend to applications seeking interim orders.

Taking into account the arguments of both the sides, Justice Shukla, referring to the Top Court's observations, rejected the husband's argument as it observed thus:

"A provision which has been enacted for the benefit of a particular class has to be given an interpretation, which promotes the object of the relief provided. Once interim maintenance has to be awarded, the only reasonable conclusion which can be drawn from the directions of the Hon'ble the Supreme Court is that the said interim maintenance must also be granted from the date of the application. This is also keeping in view the fact that applications for interim maintenance also remain pending for years altogether."

The High Court also took a grim view of the timeline in the present case. It noted that the wife had moved the main application under Section 125 CrPC as far back as October 2023 and the specific application for interim maintenance was filed on August 5, 2024.

The single judge noted that, despite the statutory mandate that such applications be disposed of within 60 days, objections were filed only in January 2025, and the impugned order was passed in April 2025, well beyond the stipulated period.

"Although Section 125 Cr.P.C. mandates that an application for interim maintenance shall, as far as possible, be disposed of within 60 days from the date of service of notice of the application, it is a sad reality that in many cases applications for interim maintenance remain pending for a long time", the HC remarked.

The Court reasoned that maintenance orders are granted to women and children who have been forsaken by their husbands/fathers, or who have an otherwise valid reason to live separately or seek maintenance and who have no adequate source of income to maintain themselves.

"Permitting a woman to live in penury, while her application for interim maintenance is decided, cannot be the intent of the law," the Court observed.

It added that the grant of maintenance must date back to the filing of the application, as the filing of the application determines the exigency of seeking maintenance.

Consequently, the High Court modified the Family Court's order and directed that interim maintenance be paid from August 5, 2024, the date on which she moved the application for interim maintenance.