Legal Marriage age of women is 18 to 21

Cabinet Clears Proposal

On Wednesday, the Union cabinet passed a proposal to raise awareness about the legal marriage age for women. The legal age is from 18-21, the same as men.

As per the sources, it said, a year after Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that the plan is under review. PM Modi, during his Independence Day speech, has made a mention of the proposal.PM said, "This government is constantly concerned about the health of daughters and sisters. To save the daughters from malnutrition, it is necessary that they are married at the right age." The government is eyeing changes to the prohibition of the child marriage Act, the special marriage act, and the Hindu act to bring the plan into action.

The proposals in the bill have been made based on the recommendations submitted to Niti ayog in December 2020 by the centre's task force, headed by Jaya Jaitly, which was constituted to examine"matters pertaining to the age of motherhood, imperatives of lower MMR(Maternal mortality rate), improvement of nutritional levels and related issues."

As per the statement given by Jaya Jaitly to Indian express said,"I want to make clear that our reasoning behind the recommendation was never one of population control. Recent data released by NFHS (National family health survey) have. Already shown that the total fertility rate is decreasing and the population is under control the idea behind it is the empowerment of women”.