Bill to raise legal age of women's marriage unlikely in Budget Session; Parliament panel gets fourth extension

More than a year has passed after the government referred a Bill proposing to raise the legal age of marriage of women from 18 to 21 to a Parliamentary committee for scrutiny but with the panel getting another extension the proposed legislation is not likely to come up in the Budget Session starting January 31.

On Wednesday, according to the Rajya Sabha bulletin, Chairman Jagdeep Dhankhar granted a further extension of time for a period of three months from January 24 to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education, Women, Children, Youth and Sports to finalise its recommendation.

With this extension, the fourth since the government referred to the panel on December 21, 2021, the Bill is likely to come up even in the second leg of Budget Session that ends on April 6. The panel now has time till April 23 to submit its report.

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The panel has conducted 19 meetings since January 5 last year and a discussion on the Bill was scheduled, as per the agenda shown on the Rajya Sabha website, four times -- April 13, May 9, May 17 and November 15 last year. No meetings were held between June 20 and October 18.

It was not immediately known whether the committee discussed the issue on other occasions. Sources said in some meetings, the MPs had raised questions about the procedure to go ahead in dealing with the Bill.

The Standing Committee had in January last year sought views from the public and stakeholders, amid a section of activists and experts opposing the Bill saying it was detrimental to the interests of women while the government insisted that it will check the infant mortality rate (IMR) and mother's mortality rate (MMR).

Around 90,000 of the 95,000 online responses received by the committee opposed the Bill, amid suspicion that it could be a concerted effort to derail the government's initiative, sources earlier claimed.

Before the reconstitution of the panel last September, there was only one woman MP in the panel -- Trinamool Congress' Sushmita Deb. Now it has three more MPs -- Kanimozhi NVN Somu (DMK), Sangeeta Yadav (BJP) and Pratibha Singh (Congress).

One of the panel members TN Prathapan (Congress) had earlier demanded that all women MPs in Parliament should be consulted by the panel besides other experts and activists working in the field of women's rights.