TMC MP Sushmita Dev only woman in 31-member parliamentary panel examining bill to raise marriage age of women

The 31-member strong parliamentary panel tasked with examining the Prohibition of Child Marriage (Amendment) Bill 2021, which seeks to raise the legal age of women to marry from 18 years to 21 years, has only one woman..According to the list of members of the parliamentary standing committee available on the Rajya Sabha website, the panel led by senior BJP leader Dr Vinay P Sahasrabuddhe has only Trinamool Congress MP Sushmita Dev as woman member.During the winter session of the parliament, the said Bill piloted by the Women and Child Development Ministry was introduced in the Lok Sabha and amidst massive protest by the opposition. It was referred to a parliamentary standing committee on Education, Women, Children, Youth and Sports for further scrutiny.The panel so constituted has 21 members from the Lok Sabha and 10 from the Rajya Sabha.The Bill seeks to amend seven personal laws likewise, the Prohibition of Christian Marriage Act, 2006; Parsi Marriage and Divorce Act, 1936; Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act, 1937; Special Marriage Act, 1954; Hindu Marriage Act, 1955; and Foreign Marriage Act, 1969."Equality of women in our country needs to be seen in terms of age of marriage. Invoking marriage laws of different faiths, I rise to introduce the amendment bill. This amendment gives equality to men and women in allowing both to marry at 21. Our research shows that 2.1 million child marriages had to be stopped and many underage girls were found pregnant. So you are stopping right to equality," Minister of Women and Child Development Smriti Irani had stated while introducing the Bill in Lok Sabha..The introduction of uniform marrige age for woman through the Prohibition of Child Marriage (Amendment) Bill 2021 was based on recommendations submitted to the NITI Aayog in December 2020. These recommendations were submitted by a task force, headed by former Samata Party Chief Jaya Jaitley. The committee had been constituted to examine matters regarding the age of motherhood, improvement of nutritional levels of females and decreasing maternal mortality rates.Top government expert VK Paul and senior officials of the Union Health Ministry, Union Ministry of Women and Child Development and the Union Law Ministry were among the members of the task force set up in June last year.The task force had stressed that a woman should be at least 21 years of age at the time of her first pregnancy. This delay would have a positive financial, social and health impact on families, society and children, the proposal reasoned.Earlier this year, the Supreme Court had issued notice in a plea seeking a transfer of the cases praying for a uniform marriage age for men and women, from the High Courts to the apex court.The transfer petition filed by advocate Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay had stated that to avoid a multiplicity of litigation and conflicting views on the interpretation of Articles 14, 15, 21 and judgments on gender justice and equality, the top court should transfer petitions pending before the Delhi and Rajasthan High Courts to itself and decide them together.In his main petition seeking a uniform age for marriage, Upadhyay stated that there are specific religion-based laws which prescribe a certain age for marriage and that it is discriminatory of Articles 14 and 21.The provisions are:Section 60(1) of the Indian Christian Marriage Act, 1872;Section 3(1)(c) of the Parsi Marriage and Divorce Act, 1936;Section 4(c) of the Special Marriage Act, 1954;Section 5(iii) of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955;Section 2(a) of the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006.Upadhyay had prayed that the minimum marriage age for men and women should be fixed at 21.The plea had further urged the top court to direct the Central government to take appropriate steps to remove the anomalies in the minimum age of marriage and to make it ‘gender neutral, religion neutral and uniform for all citizens’ in spirit of the Articles 14, 15, 21 and International Conventions..[Read Bill]