The District Court in Makwanpur had set a goal to settle 70 percent of its cases within this fiscal year. However, the target seems unachievable given the rising number of cases that are filed at the court.

The new civil and criminal codes, introduced on August 17, 2018, states that there should be a one-year reconciliation or cooling-off period if the wife or husband declines a divorce. This cooling period has contributed to the stockpiling of divorce cases at the court.

Among the cases that have been registered in the court this fiscal year, more than 33 percent are divorce related.

In the last fiscal year, there were only 149 pending cases of divorce, whereas 366 cases of divorce have already been registered within nine months of the running fiscal year.

Employees of the court have demanded that the cooling period be shortened.

Keshavraj Kaushik, registrar at the court, said there are 515 cases of divorce in the court at present. Of them, 231 cases are pending.

According to the data of the District Court, 1,990 cases have been registered in the court until Tuesday. Among them, 1,056 cases (only 53 percent) have been settled until now.

“If there weren’t any cases of divorce, we might have been able to settle 64 percent of the pending cases till date,” said Kaushik.

In the last fiscal year, the court had settled 70 percent of its cases.

With the introduction of the new civil and criminal codes, the number of men filing for divorce has risen. In effect, the number of divorces filed in the courts has also increased.

According to legal practitioners, the number of men filing for divorce has increased due to the ease in legal provisions brought about by the implementation of the new codes. Under the new civil and criminal codes, a man can file for divorce directly at the court as opposed earlier when men seeking divorce had to file a case at the local body, which would then be forwarded to the court after a year only if deemed reasonable. For women, the process is simpler. They can directly go to the court with their divorce demand.