Marriage registration may be made mandatory

Govt is considering inserting a clause in the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 ? in the larger fight against child marriage.Will this help curb child marriages?

Updated on: Aug 29, 2006, 02:17:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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In what could revive the debate on a common civil code, the government is considering inserting a clause in the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 to make registration of marriages mandatory. But the provision does not find a place where it was actually needed — a proposed law to prevent child marriage that will apply to all communities.

In November last year, the Parliamentary Standing Committee of the Law Ministry had recommended that marriage registration be made mandatory under the Prevention of Child Marriage (PCM) Bill to address the scourge of child marriage that cannot be tackled effectively under the existing Child Marriage Restraint Act of 1929. Registered marriages, it was argued, have elevated the socio-economic status of women in some states..

But the Law Ministry did not fully agree. In the PCM Bill circulated for Cabinet consideration, it excluded this recommendation while accepting the panel's other recommendations. Under the prevailing Restraint Act, a child marriage is a fait accompli and cannot be declared void.

The ministry argued that mandatory registration under the PCM Bill may not be legally tenable as many communities permit more than one marriage. But the Ministry of Women and Child Development insisted that it would not be possible to protect women's marital rights without mandatory marriage registrations.

Agreeing with the WCD Ministry's views to some extent, the Law Ministry has chosen to be selective and has moved to make registrations compulsory in marriages solemnized with Hindu rites. "As only one marriage is allowed under the Hindu Marriage Act, it would be easier to implement the provision," a source explained. Also, a Hindu marriage where the bride and the bridegroom are below the age of 18 and 21 can be declared void ab initio under the existing Act.

The government has also accepted the parliamentary committee's suggestion to amend the Hindu Marriage Act to incorporate penal provisions similar to those suggested in the PCM Bill.

The anti-child marriage bill -- likely to come up for Cabinet consideration in September -- will also have provisions for appointing officers to prevent child marriages, compensation to child marriage victims and defining the rights of children born out of such marriages. The offenders could be sent to jail for ten years if immoral trafficking is the objective behind child marriage.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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