Page 66 - June2018

column

Hiding income from spouse

doesn’t pay well in long run

It is sad that the wives are being forced to
The LasT ow there is no use hiding sal- use the RTI Act to get to know the salary of
ary slips from your wife. Going
Word by the Madhya Pradesh High her husband. As Central Information Com-
missioner Professor Madabhushi Sridhar
Court’s latest verdict, it is ille-
Abdul WAsey N gal. The court on May 28 ruled puts it, “The law, which is supposed to be a
that a woman has the right to know the re- tool to secure transparency and account-
muneration of her husband. Clubbing this ability, has to be used to make husbands
judgement with an earlier Supreme Court responsible.” In most cases, the husbands
ruling may offer a broader picture. The apex do not share the particulars of their salaries
court had set a benchmark in April 2017 for with their wives, while they exclusively op-
maintenance to be paid by a husband to his erate the salary accounts of their spouses if
estranged wife, stating that 25 per cent of they are employed. The wives, in most cases,
his net salary might constitute a “just and hand over whole salaries either to the hus-
proper” amount as alimony. band and seek allowances to go to office
The court had directed a resident of West every day. Many times, a husband takes
Bengal’s Hoogly, earning 95,527 a month,
to set aside 20,000 as maintenance for his
former wife and their son. The legal bench Transparency among
was of the view that the amount of mainte-
nance or permanent alimony must be suf- couples over salaries
ficient to ensure that a woman lived with
dignity after separating from her husband. may go a long way
The latest case involved a petition by in keeping their
one Sunita Jain, who had moved the court
seeking a higher maintenance from her es- relations intact,
tranged husband. Sunita highlighted in her cordial and peaceful
plea that Pawan Kumar Jain was giving her
a monthly maintenance of just 7,000 while
he was earning a high salary. A trial court home loan and his wife pay the instalments.
had earlier turned down Sunita’s plea to To quote the CIC’s Sridhar, “Sharing love
see her estranged husband’s salary slip. She does not fall under RTI or personal laws. But
later filed a Right to Information application ignoring responsibility would bring spouses
to seek his salary details. to courts and tribunals. Then it is no more
The matter reached the Central Infor- an issue of love but that of law and duty.” In
mation Commission’s (CIC) doors. It direct- some rare cases, wives too hide their actual
ed the Central Public Information Officer salary from their spouse. One of my friends
of BSNL, the employer of her estranged was under the impression, for years, that his
husband, on July 27, 2007, to provide the wife gets only up to Rs30,000 per month.
required details to Sunita. That order was Only recently he discovered that her actual
challenged in the Madras High Court by pay was 90,000. It may be fine to hide one’s
Pawan. A single-judge bench had then set salary slips for a month or two to surprise
aside the CIC order in March 2015. Jain then your spouse on his or her birthday or mar-
reportedly approached a two-judge bench riage anniversary. But cautiously keeping
of the Madhya Pradesh High Court which them secret for years may hurt the trust and
said a wife has the right to know the pay relations between the two.
details of her husband. The whole process
of seeking justice took more than a decade. letters@tehelka.com

Tehelka / 15 june 2018 66 www.Tehelka.com

66 The Last Word-Abdul-Column.indd 2 04/06/18 12:52 PM