Law panel's knotty idea: Let boys marry at 18

New Delhi: The legal age for men to marry should be made 18 and marriages of people younger than 16 should be annulled and declared illegal, the Law Commission of India has recommended.

The Government must amend laws and reduce the marriageable age for men from 21 to 18, says the commission in two reports presented to the Union Law Minister on Wednesday.

''There is no rational, scientific basis to why boys who may vote or take other decisions after 18 must wait to be 21 to marry,” commission member Kirti Singh told UNI.

The commission has recommended that the age for sexual consent should be raised from 15 years to 16 for women, regardless of whether they are married or not.

If the government accepts the commission’s recommendation, men who have sex with their ‘wives’ younger than 16 will be booked.

The commission’s recommendations come after a research group’s report that child marriages, though illegal, continue unabated in the three big states of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh.

Delhi-based Centre for Social Research on February 3 published a report which says: “the proportion of people whose community still practices child marriage is 77.2 percent in Madhya Pradesh, followed by Rajasthan (41 percent) and Uttar Pradesh (10 percent)”.

The law commission in its proposal noted that child marriage stunts the growth and development, particularly of the girl child who is the more vulnerable to domestic violence and sexual abuse. It also deprives the girl child of her right to obtain education and live with freedom and dignity.

It studied the changes to the Child Marriage Restraint Act 1929, with reference to the age of marriage and age of consent for sexual intercourse, and judgements which have upheld the validity of child marriage through the years.

The panel also looked at laws related to child marriage from various countries and also International Covenants that mandate the eradication of child marriage like the CEDAW (The Convention On The Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women).

It also studied the CRC (Convention On The Rights Of The Child), which makes it obligatory for states to protect children from all forms of violence, abuse and neglect.