BHUBANESWAR: Fifty per cent of the villages in Deogarh district have been declared child marriage free taking it a step closer to achieving the state government’s target of making Odisha child marriage free by 2030.
Altogether 370 out of 775 villages were accorded this status by the district administration based on the recommendations of the gram panchayat-level task force on January 13, 2021.
“There was not a single case of girls or boys marrying before the legal ages of 18 and 21 respectively in these 370 villages in the past one year,” said collector (Deogarh) Sudhansu Mohan Samal. “To prevent child marriages, we first identified the vulnerable villages and formed committees to sensitize people against the social evil and its negative impact on an individual’s mental and physical development. Gram panchayat-level task force was also formed comprising local elected representatives, anganwadi workers and ANMs to keep a tab on the incidents,” Samal told TOI.
Samal said community involvement helped the district administration in preventing child marriages in these villages. “When we started work to prevent marriage of boys and girls below the legitimate age, we decided to make it a self-sustaining model instead of an administration-driven model. Since it’s a social issue, involvement of the society is crucial to prevent such incidents. The administration has only supported the village- level committees to ensure that people in all villages prevent such incidents,” said Samal.
Villages that have performed better in terms of preventing such practice were felicitated by the administration to encourage others.