Assam repeals Muslim Marriage Act to prevent child marriages

The Assam Cabinet on Friday repealed the state’s Muslim Marriages and Divorces Registration Act, 1935 to prevent child marriages, Chief Minister Himanta Sarma said.

The Act contained provisions allowing marriages to be registered even if the bride and the groom “had not reached the legal ages of 18 and 21”, Sarma said in a social media post. “This move [to repeal the Act] marks another significant step towards prohibiting child marriages in Assam,” he said.

State minister Jayanta Malla Baruah said that scrapping the “colonial Act”, which regulated marital relationships among Muslims in Assam, is “a very important step in the journey towards a Uniform Civil Code” in the state, The Indian Express quoted him as saying.

A Uniform Civil Code involves a common set of laws governing marriage, divorce, succession and adoption for all citizens. Currently, different religious communities are governed by their own codes of personal law.

“The Assam Muslim Marriage and Divorce Registration Act 1935 – on the basis of which 94 Muslim registrars had even now been doing the registration and divorce of Muslim marriages in the state – has been repealed,” Baruah said. “Today’s Cabinet [decision] has removed this Act, as a result of which, after today, Muslim marriage registration or divorce registration cannot happen through this Act....

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