The Persistence of Child Marriage: A Critical Analysis of Legal Loopholes and Socio-Legal Determinants

Child marriage emerges as an entrenched human rights violation that disproportionately compromises the physical, psychological, and socio-economic well-being of young individuals, particularly adolescent girls.1 Despite wide-scale legislative reforms being made throughout the country spanning over a century, the practice remains embedded across various regions of India, especially prevalent in Northern States. This research article provides a comprehensive legal and socio-legal analysis of the persistence of child marriage in India. It examines the structural tension between statutory prohibitions such as the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006 (PCMA) and the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012 (POCSO) and Hindu personal law regimes that continue to recognise the validity of underage unions. By synthesising empirical data from the National Family Health Surveys (NFHS-4 and NFHS-5) alongside recent field studies, this paper explores the primary socio-legal determinants of child marriage, including poverty, deep-seated patriarchal norms, perceived threats to family ‘honour’, and infrastructural deficits in secondary education. Furthermore, the article delves into the judicial reliance on traditional doctrines like factum valet, the legislative anomalies rendering child marriages ‘illegal yet valid’ (voidable rather than void ab initio), and the severe infringement upon young women’s reproductive autonomy and constitutional guarantees under Articles 14, 15(3), 21, and 21A. Finally, the paper offers strategic recommendations for harmonising conflicting statutory frameworks, enforcing mandatory registration, operationalising village-level child protection mechanisms, and implementing uniform civil standards to eliminate this institutional social evil. Furthermore, India’s international commitments under CEDAW and the UNCRC remain compromised by domestic legal ambiguities that fail to declare these marriages strictly void. The physiological toll on young brides is devastating, with early spousal cohabitation leading directly to high-risk teenage pregnancies, maternal mortality, and intergenerational cycles of malnutrition. This practice persists despite the enactment of the POCSO Act, 2012, which criminalises underage sexual acts but historically clashed with marital rape exceptions under the Indian Penal Code (Now BNS) also inclusion of minimum age criteria to be followed for marriage. Ultimately, eradicating this entrenched social evil requires not only stringent legal harmonisation but also comprehensive community mobilisation to empower adolescent girls as agents of change rather than passive subjects of traditions.