Consent In Child Marriage: Valid Consent Or Legal Fiction
- IJLLR Journal
- 3 days ago
- 1 min read
Ms. Mehjabin Ansari, LLM (Family Law) AIALS, Amity University, Noida, Uttar Pradesh
ABSTRACT
Child marriage is a phenomenon that persists across cultures, geographies, and legal traditions, yet it sits in irreconcilable tension with the foundational principle of free and informed consent. In Indian law, the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006 renders child marriages voidable rather than void ab initio, thereby implicitly recognising a species of consent that contract law categorically rejects. This article argues that the notion of "consent" attributed to children in the context of marriage is a legal fiction a deliberate false assumption adopted by the legislature to accommodate socio-cultural realities at the cost of constitutional and contractual coherence. Through doctrinal analysis of relevant statutes, landmark judicial pronouncements, and international human rights instruments, the article demonstrates that minority renders a child incapable of granting genuine, free, and informed consent. It further examines the psychological underpinnings of decision- making capacity, the patriarchal socio-cultural pressures that vitiate any purported assent, and the legislative and judicial trajectories that suggest an emerging consensus in favour of treating child marriages as void. The article concludes with recommendations for comprehensive reform that would align domestic law with constitutional morality and international obligations.
Keywords: Child Marriage, Consent, Legal Fiction, Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, Voidable Marriage, Constitutional Morality, Personal Laws, POCSO, CEDAW.
