Hindu Marriage Act 1955 in Delhi

Who the Act applies to

Section 2 is wider than the word Hindu suggests, and most couples are surprised by how wide.

The Act applies to any person who is a Hindu by religion in any of its forms or developments, including a Virashaiva, a Lingayat, or a follower of the Brahmo, Prarthana or Arya Samaj. It applies to any person who is a Buddhist, Jain or Sikh by religion. And it applies to any other person domiciled in India who is not a Muslim, Christian, Parsi or Jew by religion, unless it is shown that they would not have been governed by Hindu law had this Act not been passed. That last limb is a catch-all, and it is the reason the Act reaches people who do not think of themselves as religious at all.

Two explanations matter in practice. A child, legitimate or illegitimate, both of whose parents are Hindus, Buddhists, Jains or Sikhs is treated as one. So is a child one of whose parents is, and who is brought up as a member of that parent's community. And a person who has converted or reconverted to any of these religions is covered - which is why the conversion route exists at all for interfaith couples.

The important exclusion is in Section 2(2): the Act does not apply to members of a Scheduled Tribe within the meaning of Article 366(25) of the Constitution unless the Central Government directs otherwise by notification. Scheduled Tribe couples are governed by their own custom, and that is a genuine and frequently overlooked point - a Scheduled Tribe couple marrying under Hindu rites may find, years later, that the Act was never the right framework for them.

And the Act does not apply where one party is Muslim, Christian, Parsi or Jew. That is the whole reason interfaith couples cannot simply marry under the Hindu Marriage Act, and the reason the Special Marriage Act, 1954 exists.

The five conditions for a valid Hindu marriage

Section 5 lays down five conditions. What most pages do not explain - and what actually matters - is that breaching different conditions produces completely different consequences. Some make the marriage void from the start, some make it voidable at one party's option, and one makes it punishable but does not by itself make it invalid. Getting this wrong is the single most common error in published material on this subject.

Condition (i): neither party has a spouse living at the time of the marriage. Condition (ii): neither party is incapable of giving valid consent by reason of unsoundness of mind; or, though capable, suffers from a mental disorder of such a kind or extent as to be unfit for marriage and the procreation of children; or has been subject to recurrent attacks of insanity. Condition (iii): the bridegroom has completed 21 years and the bride 18 years at the time of the marriage. Condition (iv): the parties are not within the degrees of prohibited relationship, unless a custom or usage governing each of them permits such a marriage. Condition (v): the parties are not sapindas of each other, unless a custom or usage governing each of them permits it.

The age rule - and the mistake almost every website makes

You will read on page after page that a Hindu marriage below the age of 21 for the groom or 18 for the bride is void. That is not what the law says, and the difference matters enormously to real people.

Look at Section 11. It declares void only a marriage that contravenes clauses (i), (iv) and (v) of Section 5 - a living spouse, prohibited degrees, or sapinda relationship. Clause (iii), the age condition, is deliberately not in that list. Section 12 makes certain marriages voidable, and clause (iii) is not there either.

So an underage Hindu marriage is neither automatically void nor automatically voidable under the Hindu Marriage Act itself. It is punishable - Section 18(a) provides for punishment - and under the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006 it is voidable at the option of the party who was a child at the time, who may seek to annul it within the period that Act prescribes. The marriage stands unless and until that person moves to annul it. There are also serious criminal consequences for those who perform, conduct or promote such a marriage.

None of that means you can register an underage marriage in Delhi. You cannot. Order 2(a) of the Delhi (Compulsory Registration of Marriage) Order, 2014 requires the male to have completed 21 and the female 18, and the SDM will not register outside that. The Supreme Court in Society for Enlightenment and Voluntary Action v. Union of India, decided on 18 October 2024, issued comprehensive directions to strengthen enforcement of the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act across the country, and enforcement has tightened accordingly.

The practical reason this distinction matters is not academic. Couples who married young, sometimes years ago, arrive convinced their marriage never legally existed. Usually it does exist, and it is registrable once both have crossed the statutory ages - which is a very different conversation from the one they were expecting.

Sapinda and prohibited degrees, explained properly

These two conditions cause more voided marriages than any other, and almost nothing published online explains how the sapinda rule is actually counted. Here it is.

Section 3(f) defines sapinda relationship. It extends as far as the third generation inclusive in the line of ascent through the mother, and the fifth generation inclusive in the line of ascent through the father - the line being traced upwards in each case from the person concerned, who is counted as the first generation. Two persons are sapindas of each other if one is a lineal ascendant of the other within those limits, or if they have a common lineal ascendant who is within those limits of each of them.

Count it out. Through your mother: you are generation one, your mother is two, her parent is three - and it stops there. Through your father: you are one, your father is two, his parent three, that parent's parent four, and the next five. So the rule reaches noticeably further up the paternal line than the maternal one. Two people who share a great-great-grandfather on the father's side are still sapindas. Two people whose common ancestor is a great-grandparent through the mother are generally outside the rule.

Section 3(g) defines degrees of prohibited relationship separately: lineal ascendants; the wife or husband of a lineal ascendant or descendant; the wife of a brother, or of the father's or mother's brother, or of a grandfather's or grandmother's brother; and certain sibling, uncle-niece, aunt-nephew and first-cousin relationships including children of a brother and sister or of two brothers or two sisters.

Both conditions carry the same escape clause, and it is the one people rely on: unless the custom or usage governing each of them permits a marriage between the two. Note the words carefully - the custom must govern each of them, not one of them, and a custom has to be proved as a matter of fact. In several communities, marriage between certain cousins is an established and provable custom; in others it plainly is not. If your marriage sits anywhere near these lines, this is worth resolving before the wedding rather than after, because a Section 11 nullity has no limitation period and can be raised at any time by anybody with an interest.

Section 7 and the 2024 judgment that changed the conversation

Section 7 provides that a Hindu marriage may be solemnised in accordance with the customary rites and ceremonies of either party, and that where those rites include the saptapadi - the taking of seven steps by the bridegroom and the bride jointly before the sacred fire - the marriage becomes complete and binding when the seventh step is taken.

For decades this was treated as routine. Then came Dolly Rani v. Manish Kumar Chanchal, 2024 INSC 355, decided by Justices B.V. Nagarathna and Augustine George Masih on 1 May 2024, and it should be read by anyone about to arrange a marriage certificate.

The Court held, in terms, that "where a Hindu marriage is not performed in accordance with the applicable rites or ceremonies such as saptapadi when included, the marriage will not be construed as a Hindu marriage". It confirmed that where saptapadi is adopted, "the marriage becomes complete and binding when the seventh step is taken". And on registration it said what nobody selling certificates wants quoted: "a certificate of marriage is a proof of validity of Hindu marriage only when such a marriage has taken place and not in a case where there is no marriage ceremony performed at all".

The Court was addressing a practice it deprecated - couples obtaining a marriage certificate without performing any ceremony, for practical convenience such as a visa application or an employer's requirement, intending to hold the wedding later. Its conclusion was that such an arrangement has no legal consequence and confers no status of husband and wife.

There are two practical consequences. First, if you are being offered a marriage certificate without a ceremony, you are being offered a document that the Supreme Court has said proves nothing. Second - and this is the part couples appreciate - it means the ceremony you actually had is what matters. A properly performed Arya Samaj marriage, a temple wedding with the customary rites, a family ceremony with saptapadi: these are real Hindu marriages, and registration simply records them. Our Arya Samaj page covers that route and our registration page covers the recording of a wedding that has already happened.

Which ceremony counts

Section 7 does not prescribe a single ceremony. It refers to the customary rites and ceremonies of either party - so the rites of the bride's community will do, or those of the groom's. What it requires is that a recognised ceremony was actually performed, and that where that ceremony includes saptapadi, the seventh step was taken.

In practice, the ceremonies that are accepted without difficulty are the traditional Vedic wedding with kanyadaan, panigrahana, saptapadi and the sacred fire; an Arya Samaj ceremony performed under Section 7 with havan and the prescribed vows; a temple wedding conducted by a priest according to community custom; and Sikh Anand Karaj, which has its own statutory recognition. Where a community's custom does not include saptapadi, the marriage is complete when that community's own binding ceremony is complete - but then the custom has to be provable.

What does not amount to solemnisation is an exchange of garlands with no ceremony, signing papers in an office, or a registration appointment treated as the wedding itself. Dolly Rani addressed precisely that last category.

Evidence matters as much as the ceremony. Photographs and video of the ceremony showing the rites being performed, the invitation card, a certificate from the priest or the mandir, and witnesses who were present are what turn a real wedding into a provable one. A large proportion of registration problems in Delhi are not doubts about whether the marriage happened - they are the absence of anything on paper showing that it did.

Section 8 - registration, and what it does not do

Section 8 empowers the State Government to make rules for the registration of Hindu marriages, and permits registration to be made compulsory. It also provides for the Hindu Marriage Register to be open to inspection and for entries to be admissible as evidence.

Then comes Section 8(5), which is the provision everyone should know and almost nobody quotes: notwithstanding anything contained in the section, the validity of any Hindu marriage shall in no way be affected by the omission to make the entry. In plain terms, an unregistered Hindu marriage is still a valid marriage.

Put Section 8(5) and Dolly Rani side by side and you have the whole picture. A ceremony without registration is a valid marriage that is hard to prove. Registration without a ceremony is not a marriage at all. The ceremony creates the marriage; the register records it.

That is why registration still matters practically even though it is not what makes you married. In Seema v. Ashwani Kumar, (2006) 2 SCC 578, the Supreme Court directed that marriages of all citizens, whatever their religion, be made compulsorily registrable in the state where they are solemnised - which is the origin of the compulsory registration orders now in force, including Delhi's. Without a certificate you have no document that a passport office, an embassy, a bank, an insurer or a court will accept without argument, and no document that can be apostilled through the Ministry of External Affairs for a visa.

Registering a Hindu marriage in Delhi

Registration is done by the Sub-Divisional Magistrate of the sub-division in which either the husband or the wife resides - either, not both. The Revenue Department of the Government of NCT of Delhi publishes the working arrangement for this: applications are received at the SDM's office between 9.30 a.m. and 1.00 p.m. on working days, a fee of Rs 100 is deposited with the Marriage Clerk, and the published expectation is a response normally within 15 days.

Alongside the Hindu Marriage Act route, the Delhi (Compulsory Registration of Marriage) Order, 2014 applies to any marriage solemnised in Delhi irrespective of caste, creed and religion. It requires the application within 60 days of the final ceremony under Order 4(a) and prescribes Rs 200 under Order 4(b), Rs 500 for condonation of delay under Order 6, Rs 10,000 for tatkal registration under Order 10, and a penalty of Rs 1,000 under Order 7 for failure to register, which the ADM or DM may remit for reasonable cause.

Missing the window does not close the door. Older Hindu marriages are registered in Delhi routinely; what changes is that the file has to carry more evidence of the ceremony, because the officer is being asked to record something that happened long ago.

Documents for a Hindu Marriage Act registration in Delhi

Bring originals and self-attested copies of everything. The commonest cause of rejection is not a missing document but two documents that contradict each other - a name spelled differently on the Aadhaar and the school certificate, or a date of birth that does not match across the file.

• Application form signed by both parties
• Proof of date of birth for both - matriculation certificate, birth certificate or passport. This is what establishes the Section 5(iii) ages
• Identity proof for both - Aadhaar, PAN, voter ID, passport or driving licence
• Residence proof for the party in whose sub-division you are applying, which is what fixes jurisdiction
• Evidence that the ceremony took place - photographs showing the rites, ideally including saptapadi where it was performed
• Certificate from the priest, pandit or mandir that solemnised the marriage
• Marriage invitation card, where you still have one
• Separate affidavits from each party covering date and place of marriage, marital status, citizenship, and that the parties are not within a degree of prohibited relationship
• Two to three witnesses with their own identity and address proof and photographs - preferably people who attended the wedding
• Passport-size photographs of both parties - carry six each
• Where either party was married before: the decree of divorce or the death certificate of the former spouse
• Where a party converted to Hinduism: the conversion documentation, and evidence connecting a pre-conversion name to the present one

Void, voidable and valid - the three categories

This distinction decides what you can actually do about a marriage that has gone wrong, and it is worth understanding before you need it.

A void marriage under Section 11 is a nullity from the beginning. It contravenes Section 5(i), (iv) or (v) - a living spouse, prohibited degrees or sapinda relationship. There was never a marriage in law, either party may seek a decree declaring it so, and there is no limitation period. Registration does not cure it.

A voidable marriage under Section 12 exists and is fully valid until a court annuls it. The grounds are: that the marriage has not been consummated owing to the impotence of the respondent; that it contravenes Section 5(ii) on consent and mental capacity; that consent was obtained by force or by fraud as to the ceremony or as to any material fact or circumstance concerning the respondent; or that the respondent was pregnant by someone other than the petitioner at the time of the marriage.

The time limits in Section 12(2) are strict and they defeat more petitions than the merits do. A petition on the ground of force or fraud must be presented within one year after the force ceased or the fraud was discovered, and the petitioner must not have lived with the other party as husband or wife with full consent after that point. A petition on the ground of pre-marriage pregnancy must be brought within one year of the marriage, the petitioner must have been ignorant of the fact at the time, and marital intercourse must not have taken place since discovery.

Everything else is a valid marriage, which can be ended only by divorce under Section 13 or by mutual consent under Section 13B - not by annulment, and certainly not by simply separating.

Divorce under the Act, in outline

Section 13(1) sets out the grounds available to either spouse: adultery, cruelty, desertion for a continuous period of not less than two years, conversion to another religion, unsoundness of mind or mental disorder of the kind described, virulent and incurable leprosy in the older text, venereal disease in a communicable form, renunciation of the world by entering a religious order, and not having been heard of as alive for seven years or more.

Section 13(2) adds grounds available only to a wife, including a pre-1955 polygamous marriage, certain sexual offences by the husband, a maintenance order or decree followed by no cohabitation for a year, and repudiation of a marriage contracted before she turned fifteen, exercisable before she turns eighteen.

Section 13(1A) allows either party to petition where there has been no resumption of cohabitation for one year or more after a decree of judicial separation, or no restitution of conjugal rights for one year or more after such a decree.

Section 13B provides for divorce by mutual consent. The petition is presented jointly on the ground that the parties have been living separately for a year or more and have agreed the marriage should be dissolved; the second motion follows not earlier than six months and not later than eighteen months later. In Amardeep Singh v. Harveen Kaur (2017) the Supreme Court held that the six-month period is directory rather than mandatory and may be waived by the Family Court where the statutory conditions are satisfied and reconciliation is not possible. In Shilpa Sailesh v. Varun Sreenivasan (2023) a Constitution Bench held that the Supreme Court may, in exercise of its power under Article 142, dissolve a marriage on the ground of irretrievable breakdown - a power that belongs to the Supreme Court alone.

Related reliefs sit alongside: Section 9 restitution of conjugal rights, Section 24 maintenance pendente lite and expenses of the proceedings, Section 25 permanent alimony and maintenance, and Section 26 custody, maintenance and education of children, in which the welfare of the child is paramount. Contested matrimonial proceedings are advocate's work; where a case reaches that stage we coordinate with advocates enrolled with the Bar Council.

Children of void and voidable marriages

This worries people more than almost anything else on this page, and the law is kinder than they fear.

Section 16 provides that a child of a marriage that is null and void is legitimate, whether or not a decree of nullity has been granted, and whether the marriage is held void otherwise than on a petition under the Act. Children of a voidable marriage annulled under Section 12 are likewise legitimate. The legitimacy is conferred by the statute itself; it does not depend on anyone going to court.

What Section 16(3) restricts is inheritance. It provides that nothing in the section confers on such a child any rights in or to the property of any person other than the parents. So the child is legitimate and inherits from the parents, but does not thereby acquire rights against the wider family.

The Supreme Court considered the reach of this in Revanasiddappa v. Mallikarjun (2023), holding that a child of a void or voidable marriage is entitled to a share in the parent's property, including the parent's share in Hindu joint family property, computed on a notional partition - while confirming that the child acquires no right in the property of other coparceners. The practical result is that such a child's position is protected against the parents' estate but not extended beyond it.

Bigamy is dealt with separately by Section 17, which provides that a marriage between two Hindus is void if at the date of the marriage either party had a husband or wife living, and applies Sections 494 and 495 of the Indian Penal Code accordingly.

Hindu Marriage Act or Special Marriage Act - which applies to you

Couples routinely ask which Act they should marry under, as though it were a menu. Usually it is not a choice at all - it is determined by who you are.

If both of you are Hindu, Buddhist, Jain or Sikh, the Hindu Marriage Act applies to a marriage solemnised by your customary rites, and you register it afterwards. There is no notice period and no waiting. Inter-caste marriage between two Hindus needs nothing extra: the Arya Marriage Validation Act, 1937 specifically saves such a marriage from being invalid on the ground of different castes.

If one of you is Muslim, Christian, Parsi or Jew, the Hindu Marriage Act cannot apply, because it requires both parties to fall within Section 2. Your options are the Special Marriage Act, 1954 - a civil marriage with a 30-day public notice, in which nobody changes religion - or a genuine conversion followed by a marriage under the now-shared personal law. Our conversion page sets out the real legal position on that second route, including the states around Delhi where a prior declaration to the District Magistrate is mandatory.

Two Hindus can also choose the Special Marriage Act if they prefer a purely civil marriage. It is worth knowing what that choice carries: Section 21 applies the Indian Succession Act, 1925 to your estate rather than Hindu law, and Section 19 severs a Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh or Jain party from their undivided joint family. Where there is ancestral or HUF property in the family, that is a real financial consequence and worth advice before you decide.

Why Hindu Marriage Act files get rejected in Delhi

After Dolly Rani, officers pay closer attention to whether a ceremony actually took place. These are the recurring reasons a file is returned, in roughly the order we see them.

• Name spelled differently across the Aadhaar, the school certificate and the affidavit
• Date of birth inconsistent between the age proof and the rest of the file, or age proof that does not clearly establish 21 and 18 at the date of the marriage
• No photographs of the ceremony, or photographs that show a reception rather than the rites
• No certificate or letter from the priest, pandit or mandir that solemnised the marriage
• Residence proof that does not match the sub-division being applied in
• Witnesses who cannot attend on the appointment date, or who have no address proof
• An earlier marriage disclosed with no decree of divorce or death certificate attached
• Application filed beyond 60 days with no condonation application
• A converted party whose pre-conversion identity is not connected to the present one on the record
• Both parties not present at the appointment, with nothing placed on the file in advance to explain it

How we help

Our work on Hindu Marriage Act matters is documentation, not ceremony. We check the Section 5 conditions against your actual documents before anything is filed - ages proved from the right proof, marital status confirmed, and the sapinda and prohibited-degree questions asked properly rather than assumed away. We assemble the ceremony evidence, prepare and notarise the affidavits, coordinate witnesses, file at the correct SDM, prepare the condonation application where the marriage is older than 60 days, and follow up until the certificate is issued.

Where a case needs legal drafting or representation - a nullity petition, a divorce, a maintenance or custody matter - we work with advocates enrolled with the Bar Council. Official certificates are issued by the government; our job is to make sure the file that reaches the government is complete, consistent and filed in the right place.

What we will not do is arrange a marriage certificate for a marriage that has not taken place. After Dolly Rani that document is worse than useless - the Supreme Court has said in terms that it proves nothing where no ceremony was performed, and a couple relying on one for a visa or an employer may find the whole thing unravel at the worst moment.

The document review is free and confidential. Send photographs of your documents on WhatsApp or call, and you will get a straight answer on whether your marriage is registrable, what your file is missing, and what it will cost - separated properly into the government fee and the service charge - before you commit to anything.

A note on how to read this page

This is general information about the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 and its application in Delhi as at 2026, not advice on your case. Statutory provisions are summarised rather than reproduced in full, and case law is described in outline.

Outcomes in this area turn on facts specific to you: your exact ages and the proof you hold, what ceremony was actually performed and what evidence of it exists, whether either of you has been married before and how that ended, and whether any question of custom arises on the sapinda or prohibited-degree conditions. Two couples with the same intention can need entirely different files.

Use this page to understand the framework and the questions worth asking, then get your own documents looked at. That review is free here, and it is worth having before anybody signs an affidavit or books an appointment.