Anantapur: Despite the stringent anti child marriage Acts in place, child marriages are on the rise.
In Anantapur district alone, in the last three years, the child welfare department’s helpline number 1098 had received 1994 complaints of child marriages.
Government officials and non-government organisations succeeded in stopping 1,719 marriages by intervening in time either before the marriage or during the nuptials itself. But a senior official within the department said, the number of complaints received were a fraction of real story.
Many child marriages were not brought into spotlight especially in interior areas, tribal belts and dalit colonies.
Though NGO officials located in the area get to know about an impending child marriage, they cannot stop them as only the concerned government official has the right to initiate action or stop a child marriage according to the Act against child marriages.
Recently, the 1098 helpline succeeded to stop marriage of a 9th class student, that was forcibly arranged by her stepmother. Later they conducted counselling for the family to put a halt to such plans in the near future.
Recently, Girls Advocacy Alliance (GAA) and HANDS along with the women and child welfare department had organised a seminar on the rise of child marriages and also stressed the need for further steps to be taken to stop the practice. The meeting had also noted the rise of women trafficking and the induction of minor girls into trade from Rayalaseema region.
District child welfare association chairperson Nallani Rajeswari briefed that the Act against child marriages was introduced in a GO in 2012 by making officials from village-level to district level to act as in-charge officials to act against child marriages. The gram panchayat secretary and VROs would be the officials to stop child marriages at village-level while the tahasildars and supervisors would be the intervening officers at mandal-level, ICDS project directors at project level, RDOs at revenue division level and the district collector would act as CMPO against child marriages.
The officials and NGOs stressed the need to chalk out a gameplan and concentrate on main auspicious occasions and also mass marriages to identify the possible child marriages in them.
The Acts against women trafficking was still unable to safeguard the victims, organisers observed and stressed the need to clear the Trafficking of Persons (TOP) -2018 Bill in the Parliament. “The Centre should speed up the pending process about the TOP Bill,” Mr Babu from HANDS said.
