The Maitshaphrang Movement has sought for the support of the Meghalaya State Commission for Women over the implementation of the Compulsory Registration of Marriage Act in order to reduce the number of abandoned women who are left to fend for themselves by their partners.
In a letter to the commission’s chairperson, Maitshaphrang leader Micheal Syiem said that as the commission helps so many abandoned women, it would be prudent for it to push the government for the legislation’s implementation.
Without the act, women are vulnerable to being abandoned by their husbands, live-in partners or boyfriends and left to raise any children from these relationships on their own without financial support of the fathers.
Syiem pointed out that Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma had admitted in the Assembly last year that the law was necessary but that it is still hanging fire.
Its implementation, Syiem added, would help end the “vicious cycle of problems arising out of unregistered marriages in our state, not relating to abandonment only, but also problems like prostitution, underage marriages” and cases where the mother is unsure of who the father is or who had multiple children fathered by multiple men.
