Rising Marital Age

Rising Marital Age

Why in news :

• On Monday, the Supreme Court dismissed a petition seeking to increase the minimum age of marriage of women in India from 18 years to 21 years.
• The Chief Justice of India, D.Y. Chandrachud, noted that the power to amend the law lies with Parliament.

Background of the issue :

• The Prohibition of Child Marriage (Amendment) Bill was introduced in the Lok Sabha in December 2021.
• The Bill proposes to raise the age of marriage for women from 18 to 21 years.
• But after Opposition MPs demanded greater scrutiny of the Bill, it was referred to the Parliamentary Standing Committee.
• Despite the legal age of marriage for women being 18 years, almost 23% of women who were aged between 20 and 24 years in 2019­21 married before their 18th birthday.
• In fact, in the eastern States of Bihar and West Bengal, the share was over 40%.
• In Assam, Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan, the share was over 25%.
• The share was below 10% in Kerala, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab and Uttarakhand, among other States.
• Despite such a high share of women marrying before turning 18 years, only 1,050 cases were registered under The Prohibition of Child Marriage Act in 2021, according to the National Crime Records Bureau.
• Such a small number of cases shows that reportage of underage marriages is negligible, resulting in limited enforcement of the law.
• These figures may go up in 2023 given the massive crackdown in Assam on child marriages leading to over 3,000 cases.
• With the Bill proposing to raise the legal age from 18 to 21, the question of enforcement gets even bigger.
• In India, over 60% of women who were aged between 25 and 29 in 2019­21 married before their 21st birthday.
• In the eastern States of Bihar and West Bengal, the share was over 70%.
• In Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Telangana and Tripura, it was more than 65%.
• Even in Goa, the State with the least share of such women, one in five women aged between 25 and 29 in 2019­21 married before turning 21.

Syllabus : Prelims + Mains; GS2; Governance