Court paves way for Army major's marriage to US national

Major Yogesh Sayankar had approached the High Court last year seeking a direction to the Army to allow his application for premature retirement, so as to facilitate his marriage to Shruti Kulkarni, who is a US citizen.

According to Army rules, a serving officer has to seek permission before marrying a foreign national, and the spouse has to renounce foreign citizenship.

However, Shruti had refused to renounce her US citizenship, so Yogesh sought premature retirement. He also agreed to pay Rs 2,50,000, as expenses incurred by Army on his training.     But Army refused his request.

The  army lawyer had argued in the High Court that if such pleas were allowed, in future people who wanted to quit army would use this "exit route". There was no way to ensure that person would indeed marry after obtaining premature retirement, lawyer said.

"The apprehension of the Army that Yogesh may not marry after acceptance of resignation can be easily taken care of by accepting his application with effect from the date of his marriage, which is to be held on May 28 this year," the division bench of Chief Justice Mohit Shah and Justice S J Vazifdar observed today.

"Let them get married. The Army's order of December last year rejecting Yogesh's application is quashed," Chief Justice Shah said while reading out the judgement in court.