Desk Correspondent , Lucknow - Within the span of just five days, the Allahabad High Court managed to take two diametrically opposite positions on the same legal question: can a married person lawfully live with another adult in a consensual relationship without first obtaining a divorce? On March 20, a single judge answered with an emphatic no. On March 25, a Division Bench answered with an equally emphatic yes. Both answers came from the same court. Both are now part of the judicial record. And both cannot be right.

Allahabad High Court faces a stark self contradiction on married individuals in live-in relationships: On March 25, a Division Bench (Justices JJ Munir and Tarun Saxena) ruled no prosecutable offence exists for a married man consensually living with an adult woman, separating law from morality and granting police protection stating, "Morality and law have to be kept apart." Just five days earlier on March 20, Justice Vivek Kumar Singh dismissed a similar plea, holding personal liberty isn't absolute and can't deny a legal spouse's companionship rights without divorce, echoing a December 2025 ruling: "He or she first has to obtain the decree of divorce, before entering into a live-in relationship."

This fault line personal liberty vs. spousal rights, leaves litigants at risk of opposite outcomes by bench draw, as Division Bench observations outweigh single judges but neither fully binds as precedent. Supreme Court allows consenting adult live-ins but treads cautiously with marriages, experts say only a larger HC or SC bench can reconcile it. Justice Singh added: "The freedom of one person cannot encroach... on the statutory right of the other spouse," highlighting courts' unresolved clash of constitutional liberty, marriage laws, and norms until clarified, uncertainty reigns for couples and spouses alike.

The Allahabad High Court's self contradiction is more than an academic curiosity, it reflects the unfinished business of Indian law where constitutional liberty, statutory marriage, and social norms collide. The March 25 bench was right that courts must not enforce social morality. The March 20 judge was right that a spouse's legal rights cannot simply be erased. Both propositions are defensible. What India's judiciary has not yet produced is a coherent framework that reconciles them. Until it does, couples and legal spouses alike will face a court system that speaks in contradictions.