As Union Cabinet raises legal marriage age for women, know all about Centre's major move

As the Union Cabinet clears the proposal for increasing the minimum age of marriage for women, the bill is likely to be introduced in the Parliament this winter session. As a part of the new bill, several amendments will be also made to the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act 2006, Special Marriage Act, and the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955.

The proposals have been made on the basis of the recommendations submitted to the Niti Aayog in December last year by the Centre-appointed task force headed by Jaya Jaitly. The task force was constituted to determine the matters concerning the age of motherhood and the imperatives of lowering the Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR), an improvement on nutritional levels, and other related issues. 

While the Centre is all set to bring a major reform for the women in India, read on to know in detail about the whole timeline of the central government's initiative towards revising the legal age of marriage for girls. 

Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his 2020 Independence Day speech hinted towards revising the marriage age for girls in the country and said that the government will soon consider and determine the age group. Apart from him, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman while presenting the 2020-21 budget speech said that as India progresses, further opportunities will be opened up for women to pursue higher education and careers.

She also outlined the imperatives in improvement in nutritional levels and said that the entire issue about the age of a girl entering motherhood needs to be seen in this light. It was after that when the task force was set up by the Ministry of Women and Child Development in June 2020 for determining the correlation between marriage and motherhood. 

Taskforce by Union Cabinet for revising marriage age for women in India

The task force which was headed by the former President of Samata Party had to submit its report to the Prime Minister's Office and the Ministry itself.

It received feedback from several young adults demanding the age of marriage to be 22-23. Meanwhile, other recommendations in the bill include sex education in school curriculum followed by training of women in polytechnic institutes, skills, and business.

Notably, the current law determining legal marriage of age for Hindus states that Section 5(iii) of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 sets 18 years as the minimum age for the bride and 21 years as the minimum age for the groom. Apart from that, the Special Marriage Act 1954 and the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act 1986 also prescribes 18 and 21 years as the minimum age of consent for marriage for both genders respectively. 

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