NRIs Must Register Marriage within 48 Hrs. in India

Have you registered your marriage in India?

Being an NRI, you won’t be able to escape from the legalities. Till early 2018, it was not a law. So, you could take advantage out of this fact. But now, it’s mandatory. A new rule has been put in place by the Women and Child Development (WCD) Ministry. The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) gave it a full support.

Let’s check below what this new law speaks of.

New Directive of NRI Marriage:

The Women and Child Development minister Maneka Gandhi tabled and passed a new law in the context of the NRI marriage in India. The government made a nodal agency to look into this matter seriously. However, the foreign countries, especially the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia and many other countries have a provision of presenting CENOMAR (Certificate of No Marriage) or Certificate of No Impediment or bachelorhood certificate by non-residents of India before marriage.

India has no such provision before June 2018. Thereby, the external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj and law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad with Ms. Gandhi amended the Marriage Law of 2002. It took seven days to see this legislation from all verticals and finally, pass it.

• What does this marriage law state?

It mandates that the expats with an Indian passport must have to register their marriage within 48 hours. The details of their marriage would be kept safe with the state ministry in its database. Thereby, all such records would be maintained in a central database.

The details of the grooms include these:

1. Passport details
2. Social security number
3. Visa
4. Residential address, both- domestic and foreign residential address
5. Office address of the foreign country

• Who will issue the marriage certificate?

Once this information will be supplied, the competent authority will issue a valid marriage certificate. That authority can be

1. A village panchayat secretary
2. Municipal Corporation’s Commissioner
3. Deputy Municipal Commissioner

Why this directive is necessary?

The cases of wife abandoning and matrimonial disputes are swelling up. The present law is insufficient to prevent an NRI annulling his matrimony legally in a court. There are 60 cases registered within the previous 2 years. All these cases reflect the plight of the trapped women in bad marriages with NRIs.

The government has no concrete legislation to cope with such cases. When this law shall be implemented, the NRI groom could be scanned. His arrival and departure could be kept under the watch. Thereby, they could be prevented from leaving India.

What consequences could they face, if violate this law?

The violators have to through severe consequences. A few of them are:

1. The property of such NRIs would be on hold in escrow. It would happen if they abandon their spouse.

Here, escrow is legality. A third party will keep a financial instrument or asset on behalf of both parties. In this dispute, these both parties are the groom and the bride. The third party will keep the asset unless the transaction is completed.

2. Their passport and visa will be canceled.
3. The government would keep watch over their arrival and departure.

The implementation of this law would definitely change the scenario wherein a spouse is dumped by a non-resident hubby. It would impact the three verticals-the Code of Criminal Procedure, the Marriage Act and the Passport Act. In the nutshell, a mandate of marriage registration in India would alter the aforementioned three laws.

Overall, it would surely deter the number of cases of deserting a wife or tricked into fraudulent marriages by the husbands who hide under the shade of foreign residency.