Child marriage will be eradicated by 2026: Assam CM

Guwahati, Dec 22 (IANS) Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Sunday said that child marriage will be eradicated from the state by 2026. 

He said, “After assuming the Chief Minister’s post, I took a pledge to eradicate the evil of child marriage from the state. Initially, we arrested around 5,000 people for their involvement in child marriage. Following the stern police action, the number of arrests was later reduced to 2,000.”

The Chief Minister mentioned that the police in a recent crackdown against child marriage arrested at least 400 people.

“Recently we took into custody around 400 persons as they were engaged in child marriages. The gradual decrease in number of arrests shows that the situation has improved a lot and we are moving towards a day when child marriage will be completely eradicated from Assam,” he added.

The CM argued that along with strict enforcement, beneficiary schemes like the Nijut Moina initiative have been uplifting the girl children towards a better future.

The Nijut Moina initiative of the state government aims to cover 10 lakh girl students with an outlay of Rs 1,500 crore and in the first year, over 1.6 lakh girls will get Rs 240 crore.

Sarma said, “Assam has started a big initiative today by launching Nijut Moina. Under this scheme, the girl students who study at the graduation level will receive a monthly scholarship of more than Rs 1000 and those who pursue post-graduation are set to get Rs 2500 per month to bear the education expenditure. In this way, we want that girl students should not depend on their parents to continue higher education.”

The Chief Minister argued that with the launch of this initiative, the child marriage cases will come down in Assam.

“We are anticipating that Nijut Moina will able to eradicate the evil of child marriage from the state,” he said.

Sarma further said that one of the primary conditions to avail this scheme is that the girl students will remain unmarried till they reach the post-graduation level.

“As the aim of this initiative is to eradicate child marriage, the girl students studying at the graduation level must remain unmarried till they finish their undergraduate curriculum. Once they reach the post-graduation level, there is no bar in remaining unmarried to avail the Nijut Moina scheme. At that point, they will reach their minimum age of marriage and we also desire that the girls get married in a specific period and lead a happy life,” he stated.

The Chief Minister also laid down another condition that no daughter of MP, MLA or minister can get the benefits of this financial support initiative.