The proviso to S.14 permits the waiver of one year of matrimony as a condition precedent to file a petition for divorce. That it applies to a mutual divorce petition as much as to a unilaterally filed divorce petition can be gauged from the unambiguous language used in it which is extracted for ready reference.
"Provided that the Court may, upon application made to it in accordance with such rules as may be made by the High Court in that behalf, allow a petition to be presented [before one year has elapsed] since the date of the marriage on the ground that the case is one of exceptional hardship to the petitioner or of exceptional depravity on the part of the respondent"
The expression 'petition' in its pristine plenitude includes any divorce petition, contested or mutual. The proviso does not discriminate between a petition filed unilaterally and one filed bilaterally. Extreme Hardship in the marriage being the core ethos of the proviso to S.14, in my opinion it would be impermissible to read into the proviso a bar the effect of which would be to make the same inapplicable to a mutual divorce petition and perpetuate the hardship for both the spouses, thus defeating the very object of incorporating the proviso.
My view finds favour with the attached judgments.
