Rama Krishna Sangem
In a landmark judgment on child marriage law in the country, the Supreme Court of India has issued guidelines for the effective implementation of the law and said that child marriage robs a child of her free will to choose a life partner.
Welcoming the apex court’s judgment while hearing the petition by Child Marriage Free India (CMFI) partners, Society for Enlightenment and Voluntary Action (SEVA) and activist Nirmal Gorana Agni, Dr. Bandi Sayanna, President – SCOPE said that this judgment will give a significant push in their endeavour to end child marriage from the country and made an appeal to the state government to follow the guidelines as soon as possible to make India child marriage free by the year 2030. SCOPE is a crucial partner of the CMFI campaign which is a coalition of over 200 NGOs working in more than 400 districts across the country to end child marriage by 2030.
The bench comprising Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud and Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra further held that the authorities need to adopt a prevention-protection-prosecution strategy and community-driven approach for the implementation of the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act (PCMA), 2006. The guidelines issued by the Supreme Court include focus on ensuring that schools, religious institutions, and Panchayats are seats of awareness generation against child marriage and the regions where child marriage prevails must include information on its prevention within the school curriculum, said a press release from SCOPE.
NGO SEVA petition
The bench was hearing a petition filed by NGO SEVA which claimed that the situation of child marriage in the country is grim and there is non-implementation of the child marriage statute in “letter and spirit”.
Reading the judgment, Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud had said, “The law will only succeed when there is a multi-sectoral coordination. Training and capacity building of the law enforcement officers needs to be there. We emphasise that there needs to be community-driven approaches.”
Welcoming the judgment, Dr. Bandi Sayanna, President – SCOPE], said, “This is a very significant judgment for all of us. The way state government and even local authorities have been working with a resolve to end child marriage has been commendable and this judgment gives further strength to all of us. We express our heartfelt gratitude to the apex court for their clear interpretation of this crime that plagues the country and we are sure that together, we will end this crime against children by 2030. It is our appeal to the state government to not waste any time and immediately follow the guidelines issued by the Hon’ble Supreme Court.” Notably, the Child Marriage Free India (CMFI) campaign and its partner NGOs have successfully prevented over 120,000 child marriages across the country. Additionally, government efforts have protected more than 11 lakh vulnerable children from being married off.
