The prohibition of child marriage (amendment) bill 2021 which seeks to raise the age of legal marriage for women from 18-21 year will apply all communities in the country and once acted will supersede existing marriage and personal laws raising the marriage age the government says is the key to gender equality and justice a bill to formalize such a legal change was presented in the loksabha on december 2021 however after resistence from the opposition parties it was send to a parliamentary panel for further evaluation as per the bill the rew minimum marital age for women shall prevail over all the personal laws therefore the legal age of marriage will be raised for all female regardless of their religion.It is argued that instead of legally increasing the minimum marital age the root cause of child marriage should addressed in order to bring about a value change in society.As critics have pointed out and 18 years old person can vote and is considered an adult in other laws but when it comes to marriage everyone is considered a child until 21 years the solution to the problem that the proposed amendment seek to resolve may lie in enhancing education for girls conducting awareness programmes on the importance of education among communities with low female education rate and sensitizing young students a both gender about the importance of individual financial stability and the danger of teen age pregnancies.Girls belong to socio economically weak families or forced into child marriages and providing them financial support for pursuing education will automatically raise the age of marriage among women another argument against the proposal of increasing marriage age to 21 years is that girls from conservative regressive and patriarchal families escape their families clutches by choosing to many person of their childs after turning 18 years old as a result of proposed legal amendment such girls would have to wait for 3 more years this period could be misused by families and the wider community to threads and control such girls.The government would be better of avoiding the issue of legal age and instead should fight to end the practice of dowry which incentivizes early marriage the government also does not have the right to interfere with personal laws which is the fundamental right of a community personally dont think anyone has the right to interfere on the issue of when an individual can or cannot married with that individual has reached adulthood.
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