Bill likely on increasing legal marriage age of women from 18 to 21: Report

Last Updated on February 3, 2023 by Admin

[ad_1]



The government has decided to raise the legal age of for women from 18 to 21 years, bringing it at par with that of men.


The Union Cabinet on Wednesday had cleared a proposal to bring in uniformity in the marriageable age of men and women, sources said on Thursday.





The government is likely to bring a bill in the ongoing Winter Session of Parliament to amend the Prohibition of Child Act, 2006, they said.


The proposed bill may also seek to make consequential changes to various personal laws relating to of various communities to ensure a uniform marriage age, the sources said.


As of now, the legal age of women to get married is 18 while that for men is 21 years.


The decision came a year after Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said that the government was deliberating on what should be the minimum age for marriage of women.


The decision is based on the recommendation of a four-member task force led by former Samata Party chief Jaya Jaitly.


Speaking about the recommendation, Jaitly said there were two main reasons that were focussed on.


“If we talk about gender equity and gender empowerment in every field, then we can’t leave marriage out because this is a very odd message that girl can be fit to be married at 18 that cuts away her opportunity to go to college and the man has the opportunity to prepare himself for life and earning up to 21. But these days when girls are capable of doing so much and the main reason why they are married off is because they are not an income earning member of the family but why do we allow them that feeling,” she told PTI.


“We should give them an opportunity to earn and be equal to a man and she can’t become equal at 18 when man has 21 years to do that. Secondly, we took opinions from lots of people but the main people who were most attentive were stakeholders themselves. We conducted assessment calls with young people – universities, colleges and in rural areas where they are still at school or getting out of school and the unanimous opinion of stakeholders was the marriageable age to be 22 or 23. Across all religions everyone had the same opinion which was a very heartening thing,” she said.


Jaitly said the task force submitted its recommendations to the PMO, Women and Child Development Ministry and NITI Aayog last December.


The other members in the panel include Dr V K Paul, member (health) Niti Aayog, secretaries of higher education, school education, health, women and child development, legislative department apart from academicians Najma Akhtar, Vasudha Kamat and Dipti Shah.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

mail Dear Reader,

Business Standard has always strived hard to provide up-to-date information and commentary on developments that are of interest to you and have wider political and economic implications for the country and the world. Your encouragement and constant feedback on how to improve our offering have only made our resolve and commitment to these ideals stronger. Even during these difficult times arising out of Covid-19, we continue to remain committed to keeping you informed and updated with credible news, authoritative views and incisive commentary on topical issues of relevance.

We, however, have a request.

As we battle the economic impact of the pandemic, we need your support even more, so that we can continue to offer you more quality content. Our subscription model has seen an encouraging response from many of you, who have subscribed to our online content. More subscription to our online content can only help us achieve the goals of offering you even better and more relevant content. We believe in free, fair and credible journalism. Your support through more subscriptions can help us practise the journalism to which we are committed.

Support quality journalism and subscribe to Business Standard.

Digital Editor



[ad_2]

Source link