The Prohibition of Child Marriage (Amendment) Bill, 2021 was referred by the Lok Sabha Speaker to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education, Women, Children, Youth and Sports, a Rajya Sabha administered committee that was reconstituted for the year in September 2021. The committee has been entrusted with the function to examine bills pertaining to the Ministry of Women and Child Development and report thereon.
About Parliamentary Standing Committees
Departmentally Related Parliamentary Standing Committees draw their authority from Article 105 (powers, privileges, etc., of the Houses of Parliament and of the members and committees thereof) and Article 118 (Parliament’s authority to make rules for regulating its procedure and conduct of business) of the Constitution of India. Each of the standing committees shall be related to the ministries/departments as specified in the Third Schedule of the Constitution. These are permanent committees that are reconstituted every year.
It is stipulated that each of the standing committees constituted under Rule 268 shall consist of not more than 31 members, 10 members nominated by the Chairman from amongst the members of the Rajya Sabha, and 21 members nominated by the Speaker from amongst the members of the Lok Sabha.
These standing committees were set up to ensure that Parliament could cope with the growing complexity of legislation. Given the volume of legislative business before Parliament, discussing all bills in detail under consideration on the floor of the House is not possible. Committees are the platforms for threadbare discussion on a proposed law without even sticking to party lines.
Any bill introduced in the Lok Sabha or the Rajya Sabha can be referred to a standing committee for detailed scrutiny by either the Speaker of the Lok Sabha or the Chairman of the Rajya Sabha.
Committee meetings are ‘closed door’ and provide members with the opportunity and the latitude (as members are not bound by party whips) for a more meaningful exchange of views as against discussions in full and open house. Also, standing committees provide the opportunity to the members to hear from senior government officials on the subject matter, allowing for more detailed discussions.
Committee reports are very elaborate and provide valuable and authentic information on matters related to governance. Bills that are referred to committees for scrutiny are returned to the House with significant value addition. After a committee completes its study, its report is laid in Parliament. Though, Parliament is not bound by the recommendations of the committees, committee reports carry a lot of weight. Over the years, the committees have contributed much to strengthen the laws passed by Parliament.
Parliamentary Standing Committee on Prohibition of Child Marriage (Amendment) Bill, 2021
The Parliamentary Standing Committee to scrutinize the child marriage amendment bill of 2021 is chaired by Dr. Vinay P. Sahasrabuddhe. It has 31 members (10 from the Rajya Sabha and 21 from the Lok Sabha).
Members from the Rajya Sabha include Dr. Vinay P. Sahasrabuddhe, R.S. Bharathi, Bikas Ranjan Bhattacharya, Bhubaneshwar Kalita, Vishambhar Prasad Nishad, K.C. Ramamurthy, Gopal Narayan Singh, M. Thambidurai, and Sushmita Dev.
Members from the Lok Sabha include Rajendra Agrawal, D.M. Kathir Anand, Santokh Singh Chaudhary, Sri Krishna Devarayulu Lavu, Sangamlal Kadedin Gupta, Sadashiv Kisan Lokhande, Jaisiddeshwar Shivacharya Mahaswamiji, Anubhav Mohanty, Balak Nath, Chandeshwar Prasad, T.N. Prathapan, Ratansinh Magansinh Rathod, Jagannath Sarkar, Vishnu Datt Sharma, Arvind Kumar Sharma, Dharambir Singh, S. Vekatesan, Ashok Kumar Yadav, Dhal Singh Bisen, Asit Kumar Mal, and Rajeev Singh.
The fact that there is only one women member in a committee to consider a women-centric bill has raised eyebrows. Sushmita Dev, a TMC Rajya Sabha member from West Bengal, is the sole woman member in the committee that is examining the bill for raising the minimum legal age of marriage for females. Surely, female members of Parliament would have had much to contribute to the discussion relating to the issue of raising the minimum legal age of marriage for females and it would had been better if the committee had more women members.
However, this low representation of women on a committee relating to women and child development should have been realized at the very time of its constitution in September 2021. There are 29 women members in the Rajya Sabha and 81 women members in the Lok Sabha. Yet, only one woman member was nominated to the committee.
It must be remembered that before the members are nominated to the committee by the Speaker or Chairman, as the case may be, it is the political parties themselves which choose members based on their strength in the House and on the basis of the members’ interest and participation in the meetings held over the previous year. So, the problem of low representation of women on the panel should have been thought out by th parties themselves.
How Low Representation of Women in the Committee is Sought to be Addressed
Sushmita Dev, the sole woman MP in the committee, has proposed that under Rules 84(3) and 275 of the Rules of Procedure and Conduct of Business in the Council of States (Rajya Sabha) that any woman member of both the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha be empowered to testify either in writing or in person before the committee on this issue. The chairperson of the standing committee has power to invite any one to the committee consultations.
It must, however, be admitted that members of Parliament are not experts in every field. The committee can and will invite views of several domain experts and stakeholders concerned so as to discuss and arrive at a considered conclusion on the issue.
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