A website on which registrars of state from across the country are required to upload all the details of NRI marriage is being set up by the ministry for women and child development. The website is being developed to tackle the issues relating to ill treating or abandonment of wives by NRI husbands.
Inter-ministerial panel headed by Sushma Swaraj, external affairs minister has given recommendations to review the legal and regulatory challenges faced by the women deserted by their NRI husbands.
Senior official of the ministry stated that the website will provide all the information and data related to NRI marriages including the address of the NRI groom, place of his work and this will help in tackling the complaints in a prompt manner. Uploading the details of the marriage on the website after marriage is registered will be mandatory.
On December 21, 2017 VK Singh, junior external affairs minister told parliament that since 2015 indian missions abroad has received 3328 complaints from indian women married to NRI mens with regard to marital disputes. Out of these complaints counselling to women was provided in 3268 complaints on information regarding procedures, including on how to serve judicial summons to NRI husbands.
The complaints vary from groom being disappeared soon after their marriage with the indian women to the husbands preventing their wives from travelling back to india, seizure of the passports by the NRI husbands, abandonment of wives by NRI husbands. In recent years, there has been increase in such cases and both Sushma Swaraj and Maneka Gandhi, minister for women and child development have been addressing the need of a legal framework dealing with such issues.
The panel has suggested that the summons to be issued to the NRI husbands through the website only and amendments to be made in Indian Evidence Act in this regard. It further suggested that marriages to be registered on the website within a week of solemnisation.
The Ministry of External Affairs set up a panel of nine members headed by the Arvind Goel, retired judge for submitting a report. In the report it has been recommended that the NRI men who harass their wives for dowry or abuse or desert their wives should have their passports cancelled.
Recommendation of including domestic violence into the extradition treaties of India with other countries was also made by the panel.
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