Revealing startling statistics, the Core Committee for Prevention of Child Marriage, which met on Saturday to devise strategies to meet its objectives, said that an average of 45 per cent of marriages in the state involved children.
Revealing startling statistics, the Core Committee for Prevention of Child Marriage, which met on Saturday to devise strategies to meet its objectives, said that an average of 45% of marriages in the state involved children.
The statistics are especially disturbing in North Karnataka, where 58% of marriages involved children, said committee chairman justice Shivaraj V Patil. He said that after analysing the data of the National Family Health Survey and the Human Development report (2005), it was clear that the average age at which girls get married in Karnataka is 15 years.
“This still does not give the true figure as many marriages go unregistered,” he said.
Naming nine districts in North Karnataka — Belgaum, Bidar, Bijapur, Bagalkot, Bellary, Gadag, Dharwad, Raichur and Koppal — the committee said an alarming 45% to 68% of children were being married off in these areas.
Justice Patil said that the committee would conduct field visits in the nine districts and make public consultations before preparing an action plan. “Child marriages in Karnataka manifest in two ways — disguised in mass marriages and individual incidents that are much more clandestine and hard to intervene with very minimal or no information available,” said justice Patil.
“False certificates from local doctors and lack of proper documents for birth proof is another reason why the government is struggling to tackle the menace,” said another member of the committee.
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