Discuss the role of Child Marriage Prohibition Officers and the Supreme Court's 2024 directions in shifting the approach from punishment to prevention.

Punishing child marriage after it happens rarely works under the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act (PCMA), 2006. In 2015, 293 cases were registered but only 53 persons were convicted [4]. Child Marriage Prohibition Officers (CMPOs) and the Supreme Court's directions of 18 October 2024 move the focus to stopping the marriage before it takes place.

Role of CMPOs: the prevention machinery

• Statutory base: States appoint CMPOs under Section 16, PCMA. Their job is to prevent marriages, collect evidence and spread awareness [1].
• Last-mile reach: 71,882 CMPOs are listed on the Bal Vivah Mukt Bharat (BVMB) portal, and 59,686 of them work at Gram Panchayat level [1].
• Acting in time: CMPOs work with District Magistrates at mass marriages and festivals such as Akshaya Tritiya. Judicial Magistrates can issue injunctions to stop a planned marriage [1].
• Community link: CMPOs mobilise pledges and the Child Marriage-Free Village Certificate [5].

Supreme Court's 2024 directions (Society for Enlightenment and Voluntary Action v. Union of India)

• States must appoint dedicated, full-time CMPOs at district level [2].
• Coordination units, training, databases of at-risk areas and technology-based reporting [1].
• Child betrothals prohibited, and Parliament urged to ban them clearly in law. This lets the law act when the decision is actually made [3].
• The approach shifts from prosecution alone to prevention, protection and empowerment [1].

Limits of the shift

• Many CMPOs do the role on top of other duties. This is why the Court asked for full-time officers [2].
• Portal and pledge counts measure activity, not marriages actually stopped.
• "Child-marriage-free" awards may tempt officials to under-report cases [5].
• A child marriage stays voidable by default, so the burden to challenge it falls on the child [1].

Way forward

• Make CMPOs full-time first in the 257 high-burden districts [1].
• Share lists of girls who drop out of secondary school with Gram Panchayat CMPOs as an early warning.
• Publish district outcome data, such as injunctions issued and marriages stopped.

CMPOs give the law people on the ground, and the Supreme Court has given them time, structure and a mandate to act early. With full-time staffing and honest outcome data, a prevention-first model can help achieve a child-marriage-free India by 2030 under SDG Target 5.3 [1]. Punishment would remain in the background as a deterrent.