Politics

Eknath Shinde-led Maharashtra govt sets up panel to track interfaith, intercaste marriages

The initiative will provide a platform for women and their families to access counselling, and communicate or resolve issues

PGurus Newsdesk

December 14, 2022

The initiative will provide a platform for women and their families to access counselling, and communicate or resolve issues

The committee will have 12 other members drawn from government and non-government sectors

Eknath Shinde–Devendra Fadnavis led Maharashtra government has set up a panel, named “Intercaste/ Interfaith marriage-family coordination committee (state level)”, to gather detailed information about couples in such marriages, and maternal families of the women involved if they are estranged, according to a government resolution issued Tuesday by the state’s Women and Child Development Department.

The committee will be headed by the state’s Women and Child Development Minister and BJP leader Mangal Prabhat Lodha. They will oversee district-level initiatives for women in such marriages who may be estranged from their maternal families so that assistance can be provided, if needed, the resolution stated.

The committee will have 12 other members who will be drawn from government and non-government sectors, the resolution stated. Once its task is achieved, the committee will be dissolved, it said.

According to the resolution, the initiative will provide a platform for these women and their families to access counselling, and communicate or resolve issues. The committee has also been tasked with studying policies at the Central and state levels, welfare schemes, and laws regarding the issue — and suggesting changes for improvement and finding solutions.

According to Tuesday’s resolution, the committee has been assigned to hold regular meetings with district officials on the issue. It will review work on seven parameters, mainly to collect information on registered and unregistered intercaste and interfaith marriages; on such marriages that have taken place in religious places of worship; and on those that have taken place after elopement [of the couple].

The committee will also gather information about couples in intercaste/ interfaith marriages from the stamp duty and registrar offices; contact newly married women involved as well as their maternal families; find out if they are in touch with each other; obtain the addresses of the women’s maternal families in cases where they are estranged and contact the parents in such cases, and take the help of counsellors for parents who are “unwilling”

This development comes in connection with Shraddha Walkar‘s murder case where she was murdered by her live-in partner Aaftab Poonawala. Following this, the BJP minister Lodha directed to State Women’s Commissioner to set up a squad regarding this.

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