JOIN USParliamentary panel gets three more months to examine marriage age bill
A Bill to raise the legal age of marriage of women from 18 to 21 is unlikely to come up in the upcoming Winter Session of Parliament with a Parliamentary Standing Committee examining the proposed legislation yet to complete its deliberations and getting another extension for three months.
The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education, Women, Children, Youth and Sports has been given the third extension and now the panel has time till January 23 to submit its report.
A Rajya Sabha Secretariat bulletin said Chairman Jaideep Dhankar has "granted a further extension of time for a period of three months with effect from 24th October 2022" to the Standing Committee 2022 for "examination and presentation of the report on The Prohibition of Child Marriage (Amendment) Bill, 2021".
On December 21 last year, the government informed the Lok Sabha that it intended to send the Bill to the Standing Committee, which was approved by the House.
With the latest extension, the Bill may not come up in the Winter Session starting next month if the committee does not expedite its work and submit it before the conclusion of the session.
It could come up only in the second leg of the Budget Session in March next year, as the first leg would have a busy schedule with the President's speech, Budget presentation, discussion on Motion of Thanks to the President's Address and general discussion on Budget.
This year the panel has conducted 15 meetings between January 5 and October 18. A discussion on the Bill was scheduled, as per the agenda shown on the Rajya Sabha website, thrice -- April 13, May 9 and May 17. 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 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 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 this September, there was only one woman MP in the panel -- Trinamool Congress' Sushmita Deb. Now it has three more MPs -- Kanimozhi N V N Somu (DMK), Sangeeta Yadav (BJP) and Pratibha Singh (Congress).
One of the panel members T N 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.