The Union government is planning to bring a bill to increase the minimum legal age of marriage for women from 18 to 21, a issue that will have social and legal impact.
The Union Cabinet cleared the proposal in its meeting on Wednesday and the government plans to bring the bill — which will bring the minimum age of marriage for women at par with that of men — in the ongoing winter session of Parliament. At present, the legal age of women to get married is 18 while that of men is 21. The decision is based on the recommendation of a task force led by former Samata Party chief Jaya Jaitly.
“If we talk about gender equity and gender empowerment in every field, we cannot leave marriage out because this is a very odd message that a 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 years,” said Jaya Jaitly as quoted in leading dailies.
Jaitly said the task force submitted its recommendations to the Prime Minister’s Office, the Union ministry of women and child development and NITI Aayog last December. The other members in the panel were V K Paul, member (health) NITI Aayog; the secretaries of the higher education, school education, health, women and child development, legislative departments apart from academicians Najma Akhtar, Vasudha Kamat and Dipti Shah.
The government may amend the 2006 Prohibition of Child Marriage Act to enact the reform,. The decision comes a year after Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the Centre was deliberating on what the minimum age for marriage of women should be.
About the Committee
In June 2020, the Ministry for Women and Child Development set up a task force to look into the correlation between the age of marriage with issues of women’s nutrition, prevalence of anemia, IMR, MMR and other social indices.
The committee, headed by former Samata Party president Jaya Jaitly, also had on board NITI Aayog member (Health) Dr V K Paul and secretaries of several ministries.
If passed by Parliament, the amended minimum age for women will require amendments in a raft of laws, including the 1954 Special Marriage Act, the 1955 Hindu Marriage Act, the 1872 Indian Christian Marriage Act, the 1936 Parsi Marriage and Divorce Act, among others. Also laws on inheritance, maintenance and divorce might need to be amended too.Women’s age of marriage was increased from 15 years to 18 years in 1978, by amending the erstwhile Sharda Act of 1929. The task force’s recommendations have not been made public yet.
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