Bangladesh in need of digital matrimonial database

Jahedul Islam Sourov: There is a saying that- Birth, Marriage and Death are three most important parts of human life. What if one of the part of these three major parts becomes faulty for some misinformation? Being a student of law background, I have seen many incidents relating to marriage and that all happened due to not having a digital national database where the information regarding citizens matrimonial status would be available.

As most of the population of our country is Muslim, the article will be written focusing on the majority. Marriage is considered as a sacred act in Muslim law which has both religious and social value. Sometime it is also mentioned that, he who performs the act of marriage fulfills half of his religious duty. In Muslim law marriages requires those things before it becomes valid-

i. Proposal
ii. Acceptance
iii. Dower
iv. Witness

But for statutory law, a marriage needs to be registered before obtaining its legal validity. All these registration processes of Muslim marriage and divorce are regulated by the Muslim Marriages and Divorces Registration Act, 1974.

According to Section-3 of the Act, it is provided that- “Notwithstanding anything contained in any law, custom or usage, every marriage solemnized under Muslim law shall be registered in accordance with the provisions of this Act.”

It has been so long since the Act was made to work in accordance with the Sharia law, as there was no requirement of registration of marriages or divorces in Sharia law. This Act guided Muslim society from then time and worked together with the Muslim Family Laws Ordinance of 1961 to reduce the rate of Polygamy and male’s arbitrary power of divorce in Sharia law. But, today’s situation has been changed a lot. Now, people are facing some serious issues regarding marriage and divorce due to lack of an online website that could show info about matrimonial status of men or women. People were unable to be sure whether the person he or she is going to marry off was previously married or divorced. Even people were unable to gather info from anywhere regarding these matters. As a result of this misinformation, people with ill intention were being able to solemnize marriage more than one by just hiding their previous marital status. Being a member of a Facebook based legal aid group, I have even been through some incidents where people were marring off their daughters and forcing their in-laws to divorce as soon as the marriage is solemnized for some mere reasons to gain the sum of dower and they were also threatening to file legal suit if the same was not paid. They (people with malafide intention) were being able to repeat this act and were collecting a huge amount of money in the name of dower by this fraudulent act, just for the absence of an national matrimonial website. People were also paying them off the amount of dower because some people still does not want to come to court to have access to justice and this is why many of these incidents are remaining unreported.

Hopefully, this types of practices going to end very soon as the State Minister for Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Zunaid Ahmed Palak had declared in an event to open a website, that will be named as bondhon.gov.bd to serve these purposes and to lessen the harassment of common people. He gave this statement at Brac Centre joining an event organized on 11.10.21 in the capital’s Mohakhali area.

This website will also reduce the practices of Child marriage. Child marriage has remained as a norm in the rural area of our Bangladesh. The declared age by the Government of Bangladesh for marrying off anyone, for female is- 18 years and for male is- 21 years. This online registration process of marriage will reduce the chance of marrying off anyone who is underage.

So, now it is time to see whether this project of making an effective matrimonial national database really becomes fruitful or not. It may face some challenges at the very starting phase, as soon as it will start to work out, people will start to get its benefits of having information whenever they need.

After finishing the making process of this website, the Government should take necessary steps to aware the common people of it and its usage, especially in the rural area where child marriage still remained as norms. Television advertisement can also be a proper solution for fastening the process of promulgation of this newly formed platform that can reduce efforts of people who are still striving due to lack of authentic information.

The writer is a student of law at Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman Science and Technology University (BSMRSTU).