95% of online responses to parliamentary panel oppose raising women's marriage age; 'conspiracy' suspected

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Nearly 95 percent of the email representations received by a parliamentary panel examining a Bill to raise the legal age of marriage of women from 18 to 21 have opposed it, with sources in the committee on Wednesday expressing apprehension that it could be part of a conspiracy to defeat the landmark government initiative.

The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education, Women, Children, Youth and Sports, headed by BJP MP Vinay Sahasrabuddhe, has received around 95,000 email representations on the Prohibition of Child Marriage (Amendment) Bill, which was tabled in Lok Sabha in December 2021.

Of these, 90,000 emails that opposed the bill have identical content and appear to have been drafted by the same source, sources told PTI.

It seems that these emails are part of a conspiracy to defeat the purpose of this landmark legislation, sources in the panel said.

The standing committee on Monday met with some members of the Jaya Jaitly-headed Task Force appointed by the government in June 2020, which recommended raising the age of marriage of girls.

Jaitly, the leader of the erstwhile Samata Party, NITI Aayog member V K Paul and doctor Dipti Shah were among those who attended the meeting. The task force members told the panel that raising the marriage age for women should be accompanied with several other reforms such as better access to education and improvement in women's safety.

Meanwhile, Congress MP TN Prathapan, who is a member of the parliamentary committee, has suggested that the panel should invite all religious bodies which are against the bill.

He further said the panel should travel across the country to interact with women and NGOs about this bill and also hold discussions with women MPs from both Houses of Parliament, as the committee has only two women members.

The Bill was introduced by Union Women and Child Development Minister Smriti Irani amid protests from the opposition on December 21 last year. She had sought that the Bill be referred to a parliamentary standing committee for further scrutiny and said that the government was open to further discussion on it.

The committee examining the Bill was given a further three-month extension in March this year.

The proposed law will apply to all communities in the country and, once enacted, will supersede existing marriage and personal laws.

Accordingly, the government will bring amendments to seven personal laws -- the Indian Christian Marriage Act; the Parsi Marriage and Divorce Act; the Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act; the Special Marriage Act; the Hindu Marriage Act; and the Foreign Marriage Act.