Top News

Arvind Jayatilak,
Author

Allahabad High Court has made a strong comment regarding the increasing child marriage in the country’s largest state Uttar Pradesh. During the hearing of the petition seeking cancellation of the FIR registered on the charges of kidnapping of a minor girl, the bench of Justice Rajeev Gupta and Justice Ajay Kumar said that till date, not a single case has come to light in which the police has registered a case on child marriage under the ‘Prohibition of Child Marriage Act 2006’.

The court has directed the state DGP to issue necessary guidelines and circulars. It is noteworthy that under the ‘Child Marriage Prohibition Act 2006’, those who arrange or participate in child marriage can face rigorous imprisonment of up to two years and a fine of up to Rs 1 lakh. Child marriage in India is a legal crime, which ruins the health, education and future of children, especially girls.

At the legal level, if a girl below 18 years of age or a boy below 21 years of age gets married, then it is considered child marriage. The good thing is that the rate of child marriage in India has declined rapidly. At the national level, this rate was about 47 percent in the year 2006, which has fallen to 22.3 percent in the year 2021. The ‘Child Marriage Free India’ campaign of the Ministry of Women and Child Development aims to rapidly reduce this rate to 10 percent by the year 2026 and eliminate it completely by the year 2030.

State governments are also continuously making efforts towards stopping child marriage. Just two years ago, eight states of the country including Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Punjab and Haryana have taken concrete steps towards stopping child marriage. All these states have issued notifications directing the administration to maintain strict vigil in villages and blocks to ensure prevention of child marriage. This initiative is important in the sense that even after seven and a half decades of independence, child marriage continues in the country.

If we look at the census data of 2011, more than 4000 children are married every day in the country. Child marriages are highest in Jharkhand, Bihar, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan. Last year, the National Family Health Survey had revealed that despite all the awareness programs and strict legal provisions, child marriage continues in the country.

In 1929, due to the efforts of Harvilas Sharda, Child Marriage Restraint Act was passed, which is also known as Sharda Act. There was a provision that at the time of marriage the age of the boy should be 18 years and the age of the girl should be 15 years. Marriage below this age will be considered as child marriage. 15 days imprisonment and a fine of one thousand rupees were ensured for violation of this law, but this Act was not successful in stopping child marriage. Even in the Hindu Marriage Act 1955, the age for marriage of boys and girls was kept at 18 years and 15 years respectively. In May 1976, this Act was amended and the age of marriage was reduced to 21 years and 18 years respectively. (These are the personal views of the author.)