Facing An Increase In Divorces, Goa Makes Premarital Counselling Mandatory For Couples
Concerned over the increasing number of divorces in the state, the Goa Government said it is planning to make premarital counselling mandatory for couples wanting to tie the knot.
According to Goa law minister Nilesh Cabral, the state is seeing equal to the number of divorces as marriages and many of them within six months to two years of marriage.
"We are coming up with a new policy to make premarital counselling mandatory in the state. We may also rope in religious institutions for the same," he said.
"Many divorces are taking place within six months to one year of marriage. As a policy, we thought that premarital counselling should be made compulsory to create awareness among couples," Cabral said.
He, however, said that the official data on the number of divorces or annulments of marriage was still being compiled by the department.
According to Cabral the counselling would be done immediately after the first signature and would be conducted through the Goa Institute of Public Administration and Rural Development (GIPARD) but religious institutes could also be roped in to provide pre-marriage counselling sessions.
According to the proposal, couples will have to undergo counselling after the first signature and only after obtaining the certificate of completion, they will be eligible for the second signature.
As per the Goa Civil Code the first signature is the couple¡¯s declaration of intent to marry before the civil registrar. The second signature before the same authority, after 15 days of the first signature and within three months, is the formal marriage registration.
Many in the state however felt that politicians needed to be counseled first.
Ketan Bhatikar, a member of the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party said that instead of couples, such counselling should be first administered to ministers and ruling MLAs. "Start a pre ministry counselling within ur ministers and MLA(s) so that they don't keep fighting, threatening, each other," Bhatikar said.
Nigel Britto, a journalist, in a sarcastic comment said: "Who better to counsel people on marriage than a government/party loaded with turncoats who cheated on their voters the first chance they got?".
