The Assam Cabinet on Thursday approved a bill to repeal the Assam Muslim Marriage and Divorce Registration Act and Rules 1935, which allowed underage marriages under specific circumstances. Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma gave this information.
The Repeal Bill 2024 is likely to be introduced during the upcoming monsoon session of the Assembly. Earlier this year, the Cabinet had approved the abolition of the Act and Thursday’s meeting authorised the Repeal Bill required to implement the decision.
Sharma said in a post on social media platform ‘X’ soon after chairing the cabinet meeting, “We have taken an important step to ensure justice for our daughters and sisters by taking additional safeguards against child marriage.”
He said, “In the Assam Cabinet meeting today, we have decided to repeal the Assam Muslim Marriage and Divorce Registration Act and Rules 1935 through the Assam Repeal Bill 2024.” The chief minister said the decision to repeal it was aimed at bringing “equality in the registration of marriage and divorce”.
He further wrote, “Today in the Assam Cabinet meeting we have decided to repeal the Assam Muslim Marriage and Divorce Registration Act and Rules 1935.” Chief Minister Himanta Sarma termed the move as an important step to ensure justice to daughters and said that it would provide them additional protection against child marriage.
He said the repeal bill would be tabled before the assembly in the next monsoon session for consideration. “The state cabinet has also been directed to bring a suitable law for registration of Muslim marriages in Assam, which will be considered by the next session of the assembly,” the chief minister said. The cabinet had approved the decision to repeal the Act on February 23 to end the social menace of child marriage in the state.
With the repeal of this law, many changes will come. For example, child marriage will be banned. Apart from this, registration of marriages will become compulsory and Qazis (marriage and divorce registrars) will be removed from service. That means Qazis will now neither be able to perform Nikah nor get anyone divorced. They will have to lose their jobs.
Section 8 of this Act had a provision that if the bride or groom or both are minors, then an application for registration of their marriage will be made by their legal guardians. That is, their marriage was valid by this process but after the abolition of this law, this provision was abolished and child marriage has been banned in the state.
The move comes months after the state Cabinet decided to repeal the British-era Assam Muslim Marriage and Divorce Registration Act, 1935, and transfer all marriage and divorce proceedings under that law to the ambit of the Special Marriage Act, 1954. In February, the government had decided to replace these with a Uniform Civil Code.
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