Shared household

Section 2(s) of the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 defines shared household as a household where the person aggrieved lives or at any stage has lived in a domestic relationship, either singly or along with the respondent. It includes a household owned or tenanted jointly by the aggrieved person and the respondent, or by either of them, in respect of which either or both have any right, title, interest or equity, and a household belonging to the joint family of which the respondent is a member, irrespective of whether the respondent or the aggrieved person has any right, title or interest in it.

The definition is the basis of the right of residence. Section 17(1) gives every woman in a domestic relationship the right to reside in the shared household whether or not she has any right, title or beneficial interest in it, and Section 17(2) bars her eviction or exclusion by the respondent save in accordance with the procedure established by law. Section 19 lets the Magistrate pass residence orders, but under the proviso to Section 19(1) no order directing removal under clause (b) can be passed against a woman.

The scope of the term was narrowed and then widened by the Supreme Court. In S.R. Batra v. Taruna Batra (2006) a two-judge Bench held that a house owned exclusively by the mother-in-law was not a shared household, limiting the term to property owned or rented by the husband or belonging to his joint family. A three-judge Bench in Satish Chander Ahuja v. Sneha Ahuja (2020) held that Batra did not lay down the correct law: a house belonging to any relative of the husband in which the woman lived in a domestic relationship can be her shared household, and the shared household is where she lived with some permanency when she applied, or from which she was recently excluded. The right is one of residence, not ownership.

The POCSO Act, 2012 uses the term differently. Section 2(1)(k) there means a household where the person charged with the offence lives or has lived at any time in a domestic relationship with the child. Examiners test the in-laws' house problem, the overruling of Batra, and the proviso to Section 19(1).