West Bengal records highest child marriages in India at 6.3%, reveals data

The latest statistical report of the Sample Registration System (SRS) published this month points out that West Bengal has recorded the highest proportion of females getting married before the age of 18 years. According to the report, which is compiled by the Office of Registrar General and Census Commissioner India, West Bengal has recorded 6.3% of females getting married before the age of 18 years.

“Among the bigger states/UTs, the highest proportion of females getting married before the age of 18 is observed in West Bengal (6.3%), followed by Jharkhand (4.6%); the lowest is observed in Kerala (0.1%), followed by Himachal Pradesh and Haryana, recorded at 0.4% and 0.6%, respectively,” the SRS statistical report 2023 made public in September 2025 states.

According to the report, at the national level, 2.1% of females got married before the age of 18 years.

Also read: How is India planning to end child marriage? | Explained

In rural areas also, West Bengal recorded the highest number of females (5.8 %) who got married before 18 years of age, followed by Jharkhand (5.2%). In urban areas, West Bengal again reported the highest proportion of females marrying before 18 years (7.6%), followed by Jammu & Kashmir (3.5%) and Odisha (2.8%).

At the national level, the percentage of females who got married before the age of 18 years in rural areas was 2.5% and in urban areas, the figures stood at 1.2% across the country. The highest proportion of females getting married in the age interval 18-20 years was also observed in West Bengal (44.9%), followed by Jharkhand (41.5%) and the lowest in Jammu & Kashmir (8.4%).

Interestingly, the SRS data which was published in May 2025 had also put the percentage of females getting married before the age of 18 years, the highest in West Bengal, at (6.5%) whereas for the whole of India the figure was 2.6%.

In the case of rural areas, the percentage of females getting married before the age of 18 years in the May 2025 SRS report was also highest in West Bengal at 6%, and for urban areas, the percentage of women getting married before the age of 18 years in the State was pegged at 8.2%.

The SRS data published in September 2025, however, indicates a decline when compared to data released in May 2025 in the percentage of women getting married under the age of 18%, both in West Bengal (from 6.5% to 6.3%) and also in India (from 2.6 % to 2.1%).

The question which keeps baffling policy makers and experts in West Bengal is that even after a decade of dedicated schemes targeting elimination of child marriage, the state records very high incidents of child marriage. The West Bengal government had in 2013 launched the Kanyashree Scheme, a conditional cash transfer program to improve the status of girls and reduce child marriage.

Participating in Kanyashree Dibas (Kanyashree Day) celebrations in Kolkata on August 14, 2025 West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said that the number of beneficiaries in the scheme has crossed 93 lakhs and she expressed hope that soon the beneficiaries will cross one crore. The population of the state is pegged at 10 crore and about 9.3 % population is already brought under the ambit of the scheme, according to Ms. Banerjee.

The Budget tabled by the West Bengal government on February 12 ,2025 had pointed out that in 2024-25, 15.75 lakh girls enrolled in the Kanyashree Scheme’s annual scholarship component of ₹1,000/-, and 2.01 lakh girls for its one-time grant of ₹25,000/-. The State Government has allocated ₹593.51 crore for the scheme in the current financial year.

The State Government had also allocated ₹11.8 lakh crore for gender-specific schemes in the 2025-26 budget, a 38% rise in the allocation for state-sponsored gender-specific schemes in the last financial year. Despite these allocations, the percentage of women who are married before the age of 18 years in the state remains the highest in the country at 6.3%.

Not only the SRS data, but in 2024 a paper published in the international science journal Lancet had noted that despite an overall decrease in child marriage across the country, four States, mainly Bihar (16.7%), West Bengal (15.2%), Uttar Pradesh (12.5%), and Maharashtra (8.2%), accounted for more than half of the total headcount burden of child marriages in girls.

The paper titled ‘Prevalence of girl and boy child marriage across States and Union Territories in India, 1993–2021: a repeated cross-sectional study’ had highlighted that while some States have achieved dramatic decreases in prevalence and headcount for child marriage in girls, “other states have struggled, such as West Bengal”.