The Supreme Court of India, in a judgment delivered on 18 October 2024 in Society for Enlightenment and Voluntary Action v. Union of India (Writ Petition (C) No. 36052/2017), issued comprehensive enforcement guidelines for the effective implementation of the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006. The Court, presided over by Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, observed that child marriage and betrothal rob a child of the free will to choose a life partner and recommended that Parliament consider outlawing child betrothals under the Act.
Background
The petition was filed by the Society for Enlightenment and Voluntary Action (SEVA), a non-governmental organisation working on child protection, highlighting persistent gaps in the enforcement of the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006 despite its existence for nearly two decades. The petitioners drew the Court's attention to the continued prevalence of child marriage across several states, attributing this to inadequate activation of the enforcement machinery envisaged under the statute.
Under Section 16 of the PCMA, the State Government is empowered to appoint Child Marriage Prohibition Officers for whole or parts of the state, with the duty of preventing child marriages, collecting evidence for prosecution, creating awareness, and advising on matters related to the compounding of offences. However, the petitioners demonstrated that many states had either not appointed such officers or had failed to provide them with adequate resources and institutional support to discharge their statutory mandate effectively.
Key Holdings
The Court issued the following comprehensive guidelines:
Dedicated Child Marriage Prohibition Officers: All states and Union Territories are directed to appoint dedicated Child Marriage Prohibition Officers at the district level with specific responsibility for overseeing and preventing child marriages within their jurisdictions. These officers must be distinct from other welfare functionaries to ensure focused attention on the enforcement mandate.
Quarterly reporting and accountability: Each state and Union Territory shall upload quarterly reports from Child Marriage Prohibition Officers on their official websites, creating a mechanism of public accountability for enforcement efforts and enabling monitoring by civil society and the judiciary.
Community awareness infrastructure: Schools, religious institutions, and Panchayati Raj bodies shall serve as centres for awareness generation, with structured programmes aimed at educating communities about the legal prohibition and social consequences of child marriage.
Recommendation on child betrothals: The Court recommended that Parliament consider amending the PCMA to specifically outlaw child betrothals, observing that the practice of betrothing children at a young age, even without formal marriage, constitutes a potential mechanism for circumventing the statutory prohibition.
State-level enforcement activation: All states are directed to activate the enforcement machinery under Section 16 of the PCMA, including the constitution of district-level Special Units tasked with intelligence gathering, community surveillance, and preventive intervention in cases of imminent child marriages.
Implications for Practitioners
This judgment creates a judicially mandated enforcement framework that significantly raises the operational expectations from state governments under the PCMA. Legal aid practitioners and child rights advocates can now invoke these guidelines to compel state action in specific cases where the enforcement machinery remains dormant.
For family law practitioners, the recommended prohibition on child betrothals, if legislatively enacted, would create a new category of preventive legal action that can be initiated at the betrothal stage rather than waiting for a marriage to be solemnised. This shifts the enforcement paradigm from punitive to preventive.
District legal services authorities should note the implications for their outreach programmes, as the Court's directions on community awareness create a framework within which legal aid institutions can contribute to awareness generation through Panchayat-level legal literacy camps and school-based awareness programmes.