AIPWA demands withdrawal of Centre’s decision to raise marriage age of girls to 21 years
Patna, Dec 18: All India Progressive Women’s Association (AIPWA) on Saturday demanded immediate withdrawal of the Centre’s decision to raise the marriage age of girls from 18 to 21 years saying if girls at the age of 18 years can choose the government, why they can not choose their life partners!
In a joint statement issued here, the president of AIPWA Rati Rao, General Secretary Meena Tiwari and Secretary Kavita Krishnan said if voting rights had been given to girls at the age of 18 years, why should not they be allowed to choose their life partners. The proposal of the Narendra Modi cabinet to raise the age of marriage for women to 18 years was ill-advised and should be withdrawn, they demanded.
“The age of marriage for all adults should be 18. Thus the age for marriage of men too should be reduced to 18. If we hold 18-year-olds to be adults who can choose a government and decide the country’s future, we must accept that they are old enough to decide their own future and choose if, when, or whom to marry “, AIPWA leaders said.
“Early pregnancies indeed adversely affect the health of young women as well as children, they also interfere with the education of young women. Women also are forced by parents into early marriage against their will. But the answer to chronic anemia, malnutrition, and women’s disrupted education does not lie in criminalizing marriages of those under 21”, they maintained.
AIPWA leaders pointed out that the solution lied in addressing chronic poverty. The fact was that the government was already failing to implement the law criminalizing child marriage, they lamented.
