Under the personal laws prevalent in India, the marriages are considered to be sacrament however with changing times and the differences between the spouses, the personal laws started changing and introduced the law of divorce which allows legal separation between the parties on certain grounds.

The grounds which are common to all personal laws, be it Hindu Marriage Act, Muslim Marriage Act, Parsi Marriage and Divorce Act, The Indian Christian Marriage Act or Special Marriage Act (Secular Law), etc are those of cruelty, adultery, conversion of religion, Desertion, etc. However, in none of these personal laws, the ground of Irretrievable breakdown of Marriage is not provided.

Yet, this ground which is very wide in its connotation, takes under its sweep literally all the above mentioned grounds in one way or the other because the breakdown of marriage beyond repair would have already passed through the route of cruelty in some form, desertion in many, and there may be inter-linking of other prevalent grounds as well. But the Legislature till date has not deemed it fit to include it as a specific ground in its codified law of divorce may be because of the subjectivity in the ground.

The Hon’ble Supreme Court has time and again used its inherent powers as provided under Article 142 of the Constitution of India to do complete justice in a matter where the circumstances so warrant specifically for the marriages which have broken down beyond repairs and the parties are fighting with each other for years together before various levels of court.

Meaning: Irretrievable Breakdown of Marriage means that the marriage between the parties have reached to the point where it is unworkable, emotionally dead, beyond salvage and is above the normal wear and tear of marriage.

The Hon’ble Supreme Court had in appropriate cases, granted divorce under Article 142 powers have been used but the same totally depends on the fact situation of that particular case to conclude if indeed the marriage has broken down beyond repairs.

In the case of Hitesh Bhatnagar v. Deep Bhatnagar 2011 SC, court held that the marriage can be dissolved only if it is impossible to save the marriage and the Court is convinced beyond doubt that there is no chance of survival of marriage in any circumstances.

In the case of Naveen Kohli v. Neelu Kohli 2006 SC, the Court took note of the fact that for more than 10 years the parties were not living together being embroiled in criminal as well as civil litigation and stated that “The marriage has been wrecked beyond the hope of salvage, public interest and interest of all concerned lies in the recognition of the fact and to declare defunct de jure what is already defunct de facto”. Recently in the case of Sivasankaran v. Santhimeenal 2021 SC, the Hon’ble Court once again used its inherent power and dissolved the marriage holding that continued allegations and multiple litigations filed by the wife amounts to cruelty and the marriage which took place 20 years back and never took off from first day itself is a dead marriage.