PRAYAGRAJ, July 15 -- The Allahabad high court has observed that the widely cited benchmark of awarding a wife 25% of a husband's net salary as maintenance is only a broad guideline and not mandatory. A single bench of Justice Achal Sachdev said courts have the discretion to award a higher or lower amount. The court also clarified that, for calculating maintenance, net income generally means income after mandatory deductions and taxes. The observations came while deciding two connected criminal revisions-one by the wife, Pinki alias Preeti, seeking enhancement of the Rs.12,000 monthly maintenance awarded by a family court in Kanpur Dehat, and the other by the husband, Shri Jai Prakash, challenging the same order. Holding that the family court had ignored the admitted income and reached a conclusion unsupported by the record, the high court interfered with the quantum of maintenance. Referring to Kalyan Dey Chowdhury v. Rita Dey Chowdhury Nee Nandy (2017), it reiterated that the 25% benchmark is only a guideline. Observing that the lower court had failed to consider the husband's actual income and inflation, the high court, in its July 10 judgment, enhanced the wife's monthly maintenance from Rs.12,000 to Rs.20,000 with effect from the date of the original application....