Women MPs on Monday sought greater participation in the scrutiny of a bill that seeks to increase the legal age of marriage for females from 18 to 21 years, expressing dismay over their inadequate representation in the parliamentary panel examining the proposed law.
Trinamool Congress leader Sushmita Dev, a Rajya Sabha member from West Bengal, is the lone woman member in the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education, Women, Children, Youth and Sports that is scrutinising the Prohibition of Child Marriage (Amendment) Bill.
"This is disheartening to note that a bill so pertinent to women and the Indian society will be deliberated upon in a committee where the representation is highly skewed," Shiv Sena leader Priyanka Chaturvedi, a member of the Upper House of Parliament from Maharashtra, said in a letter to Rajya Sabha Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu.
Chaturvedi urged Naidu to ensure more participation of women in the discussion around the Bill.
“Therefore, I request you to ensure that there should be more representation and participation of women in the discussion around the bill that concerns the issues faced by women in India,” she said in her letter to Naidu.
Dev wrote a letter to Committee chairman Vinay Sahasrabuddhe requesting him to invoke a rule that will allow all the women parliamentarians to testify before the panel
"… under Rules 84(3) and 275 of the Rules of Procedure and Conduct of Business in the Council of States (Rajya Sabha), I wish to propose that any woman member of both Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha be empowered to testify either in writing or in person before the Committee on this issue," she said in the letter.
She pointed out that Rajya Sabha has 29 women members, and the Lok Sabha has 81 women members.
"I am sure all my female colleagues will have much to contribute to the discussion on this issue.
"I request you to use the powers of your office to open the meetings of the Committee on this issue to testimonials from any of the Honourable women members, and request you to allot time accordingly," she said.
DMK leader and Lok Sabha member Kanimozhi also expressed her displeasure over the inadequate representation of women in the panel.
"There are a total of 110 female MPs but the govt. chooses to assign a bill that affects every young woman in the country to a panel that has 30 men and only one woman. Men will continue to decide the rights of women. And women will be made mute spectators," she wrote on Twitter.
“The much-lauded change in the legal age of marriage for women glides through the rocks of underrepresentation, inadequate stakeholder consultation and ignoring expert opinion,” Rajya Sabha member from NCP Fauzia Khan said
“We can keep making committees to ensure granularity in focus but if the democratic values are compromised, it’s never really welfare,” Khan said.
Chaturvedi said it was of utmost importance that the interests of all stakeholders were taken into account and that the voices of all, especially women, are heard and understood by the committee.
The bill will apply to all the communities and once enacted, supersede the existing marriage and personal laws.
The introduction of the bill in Parliament was opposed by some members, who had contended that the move infringed upon several personal laws in violation of the fundamental rights and demanded that it be referred to a parliamentary panel for greater scrutiny.
The bill seeks to amend seven personal laws -- the Indian Christian Marriage Act, the Parsi Marriage and Divorce Act, the Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act, the Special Marriage Act, the Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act, the Hindu Marriage Act and the Foreign Marriage Act.
