With just 2.76% of India's population, this state tops matrimonial cases!

Kerala is a divided house. Family courts in the small South Indian state are literally flooded with matrimonial disputes. When the courts in Kerala disposed over half lakh matrimonial cases in 2015, it still had over 52,400 cases pending in 2016, making it the maximum in the entire country, despite the fact that Kerala constitutes only 2.76% of the total national population!

In 2013 and 2014, Tamil Nadu was on top of the list of pending matrimonial cases in the country, according to data available with the Department of Justice. The courts in Tamil Nadu fared better and reduced pending cases and went down in the list to end fifth in position. 

Bihar, with 50,847 pending cases, is in the second spot followed by Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra along with Nagar Haveli, Diu, Daman and Dadar.  The family courts in Uttar Pradesh cleared the cache by disposing over 2 lakh cases in three years from 2013. Over 1.19 lakh cases were settled in 2015 alone.  

Cases settled  in Kerala
2013: 43,914  
2014:  53,564 
2015: 51,288  
Pending cases in 2016: 52,446  
Kerala has 28 family courts. 

The divorce rate is also very high in Kerala and as per a statistics in 2014, the state witnessed five divorces every hour. The sex ratio in Kerala is 1084 and female literacy is also very high, prompting many observers to quickly associate the divorce rate to these factors. But such a correlation would be too haste and needs to be substantiated with finer demographic and sociological data. 

Number of cases disposed of in Family Courts  

Source: Lok Sabha

• divorce cases
• Kerala
• divorce rate in India
• Uttar Pradesh
• Bihar
• matrimonial cases