Gujarat: MLA Italia urges CM Patel to raise marriageable age of women to 21 years

“Earlier, daughters used to be married off at 16-17 years. Today, parents are arranging marriages of the girls who are around 21 years old. The society has moved ahead but the law has remained backward and is outdated,” he said.

“I asked the CM to raise the marriageable age of women to 21 years. Why? Because today girls studying in college or Class 12 are being lured by taking undue advantage of their young age, leading to problems in our society.”

Speaking of a “marriage registration scam”, Italia claimed that he had statistics that in Panchmahal district’s Bhadrana village, more marriages have been registered than the entire population of the village. A total of 560 registrations took place in one village, he claimed. And in Hamapar village of Amreli, 1,341 marriage registrations took place. He gave numbers from a few other villages as well without giving a time period for the same but saying that these registrations were more than the population of these villages.

“This scam shows that daughters are running away from one place and talatis are registering their marriages in other places after taking money from them. This is a racket to trap girls and spoil their lives.”

Italia said that a woman’s education gets affected if she elopes. “The second issue is that after a daughter is made to elope or elopes herself, it raises the question of hereditary inheritance. It so happens that using the law, parents are made to hand over portions of their properties… These parents end up making rounds of the court and getting harassed,” he said.

Italia further said that the marriages carried out at a young age “fall apart when they face the reality. The courts are filled with cases of divorces of young couples.”

Claiming another legal implication, Italia said, “Girls are also made to file false cases against their parents or file cases against their in-laws.”