The petitioner asked only that her maintenance execution case be heard quickly. The Court declined to issue that direction, observing that she was pursuing maintenance in several proceedings at once without seeking to resolve the marriage either way, and that such litigation adds to an already heavy burden on the Family Courts.
Lucknow: The Allahabad High Court has declined to direct a Family Court to expeditiously decide a woman’s maintenance execution case, observing that the multiplication of what it termed optional and non-compulsive litigation creates an unwarranted burden on the Family Courts and causes delay in the disposal of matters [Shashi Gupta v. State of U.P. and Another].
Justice Subhash Vidyarthi, sitting at the Lucknow Bench, dismissed the petition under Article 227 of the Constitution.
The background
The petitioner had obtained an order in June 2024 from the Additional Principal Judge-I, Family Court, Lucknow, in proceedings under Section 125 of the CrPC, directing her husband to pay her Rs 7,000 per month as maintenance. To recover the amount, she filed an execution case in July 2024, and it was the expeditious disposal of that execution case that she sought to secure through the present petition.
In her affidavit of assets and liabilities before the Family Court, she had also disclosed a complaint under Section 12 of the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, in which a separate maintenance order of Rs 4,500 had been passed.
The order records that a settlement had earlier been reached under which the husband was to pay Rs 1,51,000 and return certain goods, with the marriage to be dissolved by mutual consent, and that he had paid Rs 50,000 in part performance. That settlement did not fructify into a divorce by mutual consent.
At the outset, the State’s law officer objected that the State of U.P. was neither a necessary nor a proper party to execution proceedings to which it was not a party. Counsel for the petitioner accepted that the State had been impleaded erroneously and did not press the petition against it.
What the Court said
The Court noted that the petitioner had not filed any petition either for divorce or for restitution of conjugal rights, and was pursuing maintenance from her husband across different proceedings before different courts. It observed a tension it regarded as significant: that she claimed to be unable to maintain herself or afford the basic necessities of survival, while at the same time, in the Court’s characterisation, multiplying litigation against her husband.
The Court was explicit that she had the legal right to bring these proceedings. It recorded that she had a legal right to institute numerous proceedings claiming maintenance under various statutory provisions. Its reservation was about the combination of that conduct with her plea of complete inability to support herself, and with the absence of any step to resolve the marriage:
“…when she claims to be unable to maintain herself and afford even the basic necessities for survival, it does not appear to be proper to multiply non-compulsive litigation. Further, non-filing of the suit for restitution of conjugal rights or divorce indicates that the petitioner is interested only in claiming maintenance from her husband before various fora and not in settling her disputes either way…”
Placing that against the condition of the Family Courts, the Court declined the relief sought:
“Multiplication of optional and non-compulsive litigation is creating an unwarranted burden on the Family Courts which is causing delay in disposal of matters.”
Holding that it found no good ground to issue a direction to the Family Court for expeditious disposal of the pending matter, the Court dismissed the petition.
Why it matters
The order sits at an awkward intersection, and the tension in it is worth stating plainly rather than smoothing over.
On one side is a settled and often-repeated principle: the remedies for maintenance under Section 125 of the CrPC, under the Domestic Violence Act, and under personal law are distinct, cumulative and independent, and a woman is entitled to invoke more than one. The Supreme Court has held that awards under different statutes are not mutually exclusive and that the later forum adjusts for what has already been granted rather than shutting the door. On that view, pursuing a Section 125 order and a Domestic Violence Act order together is not an abuse; it is the use of rights the legislature deliberately kept separate. The order under discussion expressly acknowledges that entitlement.
On the other side is a real institutional problem the Court is responding to. Family Courts across the country carry very heavy pendency, and delay in maintenance and execution matters harms precisely the dependants the system exists to protect. A court confronting that docket every day is entitled to be concerned about litigation it regards as avoidable.
The difficulty is that the relief refused was not the multiplication itself but a request to have an execution case decided quickly, and the litigant on the receiving end was a woman holding a maintenance order of Rs 7,000 a month that had gone unrealised. The execution case exists because the earlier order was not honoured. Whether the answer to overburdened Family Courts is to decline expedition to a decree-holder awaiting her money, or to expedite it so the matter leaves the docket, is a question on which views will differ, and the order does not engage that counter-argument at length.
The characterisation of a maintenance claimant as multiplying litigation is also likely to draw comment. Maintenance jurisprudence has moved firmly towards protecting the claimant’s access to overlapping remedies, and the same High Court has in other matters resisted attempts to use a wife’s conduct or circumstances to defeat her maintenance. Read narrowly, this order decides only that no writ direction for expedition was warranted on these facts. Read more broadly, its language about non-compulsive litigation could be pressed into service by respondents in other maintenance disputes, which is why the boundary between the two readings matters.
What the order does not do is disturb either maintenance award. The Rs 7,000 order under Section 125 and the Rs 4,500 order under the Domestic Violence Act stand, and the execution case remains pending before the Family Court, to be decided in the ordinary course.
Case Title: Shashi Gupta v. State of U.P. through Principal Secretary Home and Another [Matters Under Article 227 No. 4292 of 2026]
Bench: Justice Subhash Vidyarthi, High Court of Judicature at Allahabad, Lucknow Bench
Date of Order: August 11, 2026
Appearances: Advocates Mohammad Aziz Mansuri and Shalu Yadav for the petitioner. The Additional Government Advocate for the State.