Supreme Court single judge: Can I grant a divorce?

A husband and wife agreed to divorce. They asked one Supreme Court judge to sign off. The judge's reply: 'I don't know if I can.'

The signed Settlement Agreement lay on the judge's desk—two pages of careful compromise, each initial and signature a small monument to a marriage's end. The wife and husband had been fighting a matrimonial dispute in court for years. Then they settled. They signed the agreement on 27th October 2021. They walked into the Supreme Court together and asked a single judge to dissolve their marriage under Article 142 (the power of the Supreme Court to pass any order needed to do "complete justice" in a case before it). The judge stopped them.

Justice Krishna Murari looked at the joint application, and the courtroom fell into a brief, heavy silence. He said, in effect: I need to ask a larger bench whether I, as one judge, have the authority to grant a divorce at all. The couple sat together, their faces expectant, having come not as adversaries but as joint petitioners.

When the judge stopped the hearing

The case — Anamika Varun Rathore @ Anamika Singh Bhadouria v. Varun Pratap Singh Rathore — began as a transfer petition (a request to move a case from one court to another). The wife had filed it before the Supreme Court. While the petition was pending, the couple reached a full settlement. They submitted a joint application under Article 142, annexing their signed agreement, and asked the single judge to pass a decree of divorce.

This is not unusual. In recent years, the Supreme Court has frequently used Article 142 to grant divorces by mutual consent when couples have settled their disputes, bypassing the usual six-month waiting period required under the Hindu Marriage Act. But those orders were passed by two-judge or three-judge benches. A single judge had never done it. Justice Krishna Murari noticed the gap.

The file on his desk felt thin—just the transfer petition, the joint application, and the settlement agreement. They had done everything right: settled their differences, signed the agreement, come to court together. The only thing missing was the judge's signature. And that signature, the judge now said, might not be his to give.

The question that stopped the proceedings

The judge did not rule on the divorce application. Instead, he flagged a jurisdictional question: Does a single judge of the Supreme Court have the power to grant a decree of divorce under Article 142 based on a settlement agreement?

He noted that a similar question had been raised in an earlier case — Transfer Petition (Civil) No. 908 of 2019 — where an order dated 1st March 2021 had taken the same view: that the issue required a larger bench to decide. Justice Krishna Murari followed that precedent. He directed that the matter be placed before the Chief Justice of India for constitution of an appropriate bench to hear and decide the question.

The order itself is brief—barely two paragraphs of operative direction. It does not analyse the text of Article 142, nor does it examine prior Supreme Court judgments on the scope of single-judge powers. It simply identifies the unresolved question and passes it upward. The smell of old paper and ink hung in the courtroom as the judge signed the referral order, the matter now consigned to the slow machinery of bench constitution.

Why this matters: the power of one judge

Article 142 gives the Supreme Court sweeping powers to pass any order necessary to do "complete justice" in a case before it. The provision has been used to dissolve marriages, transfer cases, and even order compensation in criminal matters. But the question of whether a single judge can exercise this power to grant a divorce has never been settled.

The practical stakes are high. If a single judge cannot grant a divorce under Article 142, then every couple who settles a matrimonial dispute before a single-judge bench would have to wait for the matter to be heard by a larger bench — adding months or years to an already lengthy process. If a single judge can, then the Supreme Court can dispose of settled matrimonial disputes far more quickly, reducing the burden on the system and giving couples closure.

For lawyers, the immediate takeaway is procedural: do not assume a single judge has the power to grant a divorce under Article 142. Until the larger bench decides, the safe route is to either seek a two-judge bench or file the divorce application before the High Court or family court under the regular divorce provisions.

The procedural context here is worth examining. Transfer petitions under the Supreme Court's rules are routinely heard by single judges. These are administrative in nature—moving a case from one court to another does not require a full bench. But when the parties in a transfer petition suddenly ask for a divorce decree, the nature of the proceeding changes. It is no longer a simple transfer; it becomes a substantive adjudication of marital status.

Justice Krishna Murari's hesitation reflects this shift: a single judge assigned to hear a transfer petition may not have the authority to grant the entirely different relief of divorce, even under Article 142's broad language. The reference to the earlier order in Transfer Petition (Civil) No. 908 of 2019 adds another layer. That order, dated 1st March 2021, took a similar view—that the question of a single judge's power under Article 142 to grant divorce required a larger bench.

By following that precedent, Justice Krishna Murari signalled that this is not an isolated concern but a recurring procedural question that the Supreme Court must settle definitively.

THE PLAY: Until the larger bench rules, do not file a joint application for divorce under Article 142 before a single judge of the Supreme Court — the judge may not have the power to grant it.

The order that decided nothing — and everything

Justice Krishna Murari's order is, on its face, a procedural referral. It does not decide any legal question on its merits. It does not establish a ratio decidendi (a binding legal principle). It simply says: I cannot answer this question alone. Send it to a larger bench.

But the order is significant precisely because it refuses to assume jurisdiction. In a legal system where courts often stretch their powers to do what seems just, a judge who stops and says "I need to check if I have the authority" is rare. The order reflects a judicial discipline that is worth noting: even the Supreme Court's plenary power under Article 142 has limits, and those limits must be defined by more than one judge.

The matter now sits before the Chief Justice of India, waiting to be assigned to a larger bench. Until that bench decides, every single judge hearing a transfer petition with a settlement agreement will face the same question Justice Krishna Murari faced. And every lawyer who drafts a joint application under Article 142 will have to ask: is one judge enough?

The couple who settled their dispute walked out of court without a divorce decree. They agreed on everything except the one thing that mattered most: who gets to say yes. The courtroom emptied, the judge's chambers fell quiet, and the settlement agreement—signed, dated, and now effectively suspended—remained in the court file, awaiting a bench that has not yet been constituted to answer a question that no one had thought to ask until now.

For the legal profession, this case is a reminder that procedural questions often carry substantive weight. The power of a single judge under Article 142 may seem like a dry jurisdictional issue, but for the couple, it is the difference between walking out of court with a decree in hand and walking out with nothing but the hope that a larger bench will eventually take up their case.

Until the Supreme Court settles this question, every settled matrimonial dispute that reaches a single judge will face the same procedural roadblock—and every couple who thought their legal battle was over will find themselves waiting again.

The order in Transfer Petition (Civil) No. 1378/2018 is dated 1st February 2022. It has been over a year since Justice Krishna Murari referred the question to a larger bench. The matter remains pending before the Chief Justice of India for bench constitution. The couple's divorce—agreed, signed, and submitted—sits in procedural limbo, a testament to the gap between what parties can agree and what a single judge can grant.