Mahakalapara: Child marriage or marriage of underage girls has seen a sharp spike in various villages under this block in Kendrapara district. The issue has acquired prominence with the number of child marriages increasing day by day. Observers claimed that on average, around 100 underage girls are getting married every year in villages under this block. The marriage of a minor girl held secretly at a temple shrine late Friday night is a case in this point.
The priest hurriedly completed the marriage rituals after local youths rushed to the spot and opposed the marriage. The girls after their marriage are attaining motherhood at an early age. This poses serious threats to their life and to the child in their womb. The law has banned such marriages and termed it as social evil. There is sufficient provision of punishment for the family members and middlemen facilitating such marriages.
However, such marriages take place unabated due to negligence of administrative officials and child rights officials. As the girls get married at an early age, they fail to reap the benefit of Mamata Yojana, a maternity benefit scheme that has been instituted by the state government to assist pregnant and lactating women of age 19 and above across the state. As a result, over 200 minor girls under this block married off at underage have been deprived of the benefits of Mamata Yojana. Child marriages are taking place in active connivance of the parents, locals, and middlemen as well as sue to the negligence of administrative officials. The middlemen take hefty sums as commissions and facilitate such marriages. The parents of the girls and middlemen are tampering or editing the age of the minor girls in their Aadhaar cards and marrying them off to men much older to them in age.
In many cases, parents, lured by money, marry off their underage daughters to persons much older to them in far-off places like Jhansi, Mathura in Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Rajasthan. The problem is rampant in Batighar, Jambu, Suniti, Kebi Dandua, Baulakani, Petachhela, Ramnagar and Kharinasi panchayats of the block where minor girls are married off soon after attaining puberty. Child marriages are mostly taking place in traditional Bengali speaking community where girls above the age of 12 and 16 years are married off secretly without any fanfare to avoid getting caught by the public, administrative officials or child rights officials.
The marriages are secretly held in a most clandestine manner in mutts, temples or religious shrines in the presence of close family members and middlemen. When contacted, some Anganwadi workers requesting anonymity said that many girls are getting married at 16 or 17 years of age for which they are getting deprived of state-sponsored Mamata Yojana benefits. One has to be 19 years in age to reap the benefits of the scheme. The girls are getting affected physically and mentally due to marriage at underage. As a result, many of them die during childbirth and even if they give birth, the child born faces deformity and health issues, they added.