BHubaneswar: Odisha State Commission for Children’s Rights Protection (OSCPCR) Chairman Sandhyabati Pradhan on Tuesday voiced concern for plans to increase women’s wedding age to 21 out of 18.
In a letter to Vinay P.
Sahasrabuddhe, Chair of the Parliament Education Committee on Education, Women , Children, Youth and Sports, Pradhan Write “to consider not to increase the age of women’s wedding law of up to 21, but guard 18 as the minimum legal age for boys and girls.” OSCPCR is a legal entity and the main stakeholder of the state government to end the child’s marriage.
The Sahasrabuddhe LED parliamentary panel is currently researching a child’s wedding bill (amendment), 2021 which proposes to increase the age of women’s wedding to 21 and make it uniform for boys and girls.
The bill was referred to the panel for further supervision after being introduced at Lok Sabha on December 21, arguing against raising the minimum age bar, the OSCPCR head wrote that adolescent justice (child care and protection) acts and an integrated child protection scheme.
Skeme has a scope to expand support for children who are vulnerable to the age of 18 years.
“In such circumstances there will be no room to provide support to the bride of the child between the ages of 19 to 21 years if saved from the child’s marriage,” he wrote.
“The Pocso Law has limited the gender of consensual to the age of 18 years.
It implies that someone might take sexually after 18 but it will not be able to get married until 21, will create a set of new problems such as the increasing mother and feticide afterwards,” Pradhan added.
Stated that the law alone could never examine children’s marriage, he showed data on the national crime record bureau that 785 cases were registered in a child’s wedding ban by 2020, which was 523 in 2018.
On the other hand, the National Family Health Survey 5 showed 23, 3% of girls married before the age of 18, he wrote.
Pradhan argues that changes in legislation in isolation will never be able to stop children’s marriage.
Socio-behavior changes among parents and society are needed, he said.
Factors such as pressure and poverty, norms and practices of patriarchy, lack of opportunities for schools and work still contribute to child marriage, he said.
Maintain 18 years of development for boys, women: Odisha State Commission for Children’s Rights Protection
