Madhya Pradesh HC: a High Court can't use its Article 227 power to short-circuit a wife's maintenance plea

The Madhya Pradesh High Court, Gwalior, dismissed a husband's petition asking it to use its supervisory power under Article 227 of the Constitution to quash his wife's application under Section 9 of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, for restitution of conjugal rights, which he called an abuse of process filed only to counter his own divorce petition. Justice Amit Seth held the petition was not maintainable, because a High Court's Article 227 jurisdiction exists only to correct jurisdictional errors of a subordinate court, it cannot be used to decide disputed facts such as malice or harassment, and cannot short-circuit statutory remedies the way an application under Order VII Rule 11 of the Code of Civil Procedure can be used to reject a plaint.

Relying on the Supreme Court's rulings in Jacky v. Tiny and K. Valarmathi v. Kumaresan, the Court also clarified that Articles 226 and 227 serve distinct purposes: an order of a civil court is not open to challenge by writ under Article 226, as held in Radhey Shyam v. Chhabi Nath, which partly overruled Surya Dev Rai, while Article 227 is a narrower supervisory check, not an appellate or fact-finding one. The wife's maintenance application will now proceed before the family court.