Guwahati: Assam Trinamool Congress president, Ripun Bora claimed on Wednesday that the Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma is just waging a campaign against child marriage to acquire cheap popularity and maintain media attention.
He said that the state of Assam’s administration was abusing the state’s Prohibition of Child Marriage Act.
”Prohibition of Child Marriage Act in Assam is misused by the Assam government and more particularly by the Chief Minister of Assam. He is not sincere about implementing the act. He did this to just create some stunts for cheap popularity and to remain in media and randomly the Chief Minister is implementing this act,” he said in a video post.
Bora further said that as per Child Marriage Act, FIR has to be filed first by the victim or by family members of the victim, adding, ” However, in this case, no FIR has been filed. Only on the basis of police FIR thousand have been apprehended”.
He claimed that the Assam chief minister is putting the law into effect without educating the population.
”Assam is a very backward state and most of the people in the village are still illiterate and they are not aware of this act. So, before implementing this act, the government should have taken massive awareness programmes to spread awareness about the same. However, it was neglected,” Bora said.
While criticising the Assam chief minister, Bora questioned why there had been no action against child marriage for 17 years, failing to realise that the current BJP administration only took office in 2016.
”17 years have gone by from 2006 to 2023. Why the government was sleeping for 17 years? No actions were taken against child marriage and suddenly from February 2, the state government started its crackdown on child marriage and arrested several people,” he asked in the video.
The Assam government’s efforts to prevent child marriage were also referred to as a human rights violation by him.
”It’s a total violation of Human Rights and abuse of law. We strongly condemn it. We request the intervention of Guwahati High Court to protect the law and to give justice to the people,” he concluded.