The Union cabinet on Wednesday, 15 December, cleared a proposal to raise the minimum age of marriage for women from 18 to 21, sources told The Indian Express.
Following the approval of the proposal, the Union government will table an amendment to the Child Marriage Act, 2006, and also the Special Marriage Act and Hindu Marriage Act, 1955.
Presenting the Union budget in February 2020, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had proposed a task force to recommend raising women’s minimum age of marriage from 18 to 21. Later, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that the proposal was under review, in his Independence Day address the same year.
'Population Control Not the Reason'
The proposal is based on the recommendation by a 10-member task force of the Union Ministry of Women and Child Development, headed by former Samata Party President Jaya Jaitly.
The committee looked into the concerns with the current legal age, such as the correlation between early marriages and early motherhood, health risks for young mothers, issues of Maternal Mortality Ratio or MMR, improving maternal and child nutrition levels, etc.
"I want to make clear that our reasoning behind the recommendation was never one of population control. Recent data released by NFHS 5 (National Family Health Survey) have already shown that the Total Fertility Rate is decreasing and the population is under control. The idea behind it (the recommendation) is the empowerment of women.”Jaya Jaitley to The Indian Express
According to a State Bank of India report, while the mean age of marriage in India is 21, at least 35 percent women get married before that, with the current legal age being 18.
India is home to every third child bride in the world, with more than 100 million of them getting married even before they turn 15, as per the United Nations Children’s Fund.
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