Child marriage in India is still a common practice. So far, we still haven’t overcome the dark cruel reality of child marriage. In 2006, after the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act was passed, child marriage was declared illegal yet, in many parts of the country, this is very frequent.
In Karnataka, there was a sharp rise in child marriages during the COVID-19 pandemic including lockdown, eventually during four months(April-July). As per the Karnataka State Commission for Protection of Child Rights (KSCPCR), the state has reported 107 child marriage cases, as per the last year records a total of 156 cases were reported.
This is a matter of concern, considering the total number of child marriages that reported last year was 156 but, according to this report, the numbers have already crossed over a hundred within four months. The highest number of cases were reported from the Mysore district, followed by Dharwad, Belagavi, Ballari, Bagalkot, Belagavi, and other rural parts of the state.
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As reported in The IndianExpress, KSCPCR Chairman Dr Sebastian Anthony said, “ When the administration was busy handling COVID-19 lockdown across the state, parents thought this was the best time to get their child married. There may be marriages going unnoticed by the administration due to the lockdown.” He also added that “the Childline, the nodal agency for children in distress had made over 550 intervention between March and June related to the issues of child marriage in the state.”
Due to the prevailing situation and lockdown, schools and colleges were asked to remain closed, this made it difficult to detect the attendance of children. Parents used all this time to marry their under-aged girl child during the lockdown.
The Director of Women and Child Development Department in Karnataka said that-“The number of cases has doubled due to the awareness conducted by the government about the helpline number ‘181’ for women, as compared to the cases reported in the last year during the same period.”
The official also mentioned, due to the complaints on the helpline number, we were able to stop most of these marriages. But due to lockdown, many of our officials were unavailable but we somehow managed to stop such marriages and also registered cases against them.
The major reason for organizing marriages during this situation is cost-cutting, as marriage is considered a big event, the girl’s family had to take a huge amount of loan to manage the marriage. Because of the pandemic situation and the lockdown big marriage is restricted thus organizing marriages during this period of time would save money.
