More than a year after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the plan during his Independence Day address of 2020, the Union Cabinet Wednesday passed a proposal to raise the legal age of marriage for women from 18 to 21 years — the same as men.
Sources told The Indian Express that following the Cabinet’s approval, the Government will introduce an amendment to the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006, and consequently bring amendments to the Special Marriage Act and personal laws such as the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955.
Wednesday’s clearance is based on recommendations submitted to Niti Aayog in December 2020 by the Centre’s task force, headed by Jaya Jaitly, which was constituted to examine “matters pertaining to age of motherhood, imperatives of lowering MMR (Maternal Mortality Rate), improvement of nutritional levels and related issues”.
Jaitly said: “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.”
According to data from NFHS 5, India attained a Total Fertility Rate of 2.0 for the first time, below the replacement level of TFR at 2.1, indicating that a population explosion in the coming years is unlikely. The data also revealed that child marriage has come down marginally from 27 per cent in 2015-16 to 23 per cent in 2019-21.
Jaitly, who is the former president of Samata Party, said the task force’s recommendation came “after extensive consultations with experts, and more importantly with young adults, especially young women as the decision affects them directly”.