Cabinet clears fresh triple talaq bill
New Delhi: The Cabinet on Wednesday cleared a fresh bill to ban the practice of instant triple talaq, Union Minister Prakash Javadekar said.
The bill will be introduced in the Budget session of Parliament which begins on Monday to replace an ordinance issued in February by the previous BJP-led NDA government.
With the dissolution of the 16th Lok Sabha last month, the previous bill had lapsed as it was pending in Rajya Sabha.
The Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Bill, which made the practice of instant triple talaq (talaq-e-biddat) a penal offence, had faced objections from the opposition parties which claimed that jail term for a man for divorcing his wife was legally untenable.
Javadekar said the proposed legislation is based on gender equality and is part of the government's philosophy of SabkaSaath, Sabka Vikas, Sabka Vishwas' .
The new bill will be a copy of the ordinance in force and the minister hoped that it will be passed "unanimously" by Rajya Sabha, where the government lacks numbers.
Bills that are introduced in Rajya Sabha and are pending there do not lapse with the dissolution of Lok Sabha. However, bills passed by Lok Sabha and pending in Rajya Sabha lapse with the dissolution of the lower house.
The government had promulgated the ordinance on triple talaq twice -- in September 2018 and in February 2019 --. as the contentious bill remained pending in Rajya Sabha, though it was passed by Lok Sabha.
Under the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Ordinance, 2019, divorcing through instant triple talaq is illegal, void and will attract a jail term of three years for the husband
Seeking to allay fears that the proposed law could be misused, the government has included certain safeguards in it such as adding a provision for bail for the accused during trial.
These amendments were cleared by the Cabinet on August 29, 2018. While the ordinance makes it a "non-bailable" offence, an accused can approach a magistrate even before trial to seek bail.
In a non-bailable offence, bail cannot be granted by police at the police station itself. A provision was added to allow the magistrate to grant bail "after hearing the wife", the government had said.
In the first session of the 17th Lok Sabha, the new government plans to convert 10 ordinances, including the one to ban the practice of instant triple talaq, into law.
The ordinances were issued in February-March this year by the previous government as these could not be converted into Acts of Parliament in the last session of the 16th Lok Sabha.
Since the Narendra Modi government returned to power in the recently held elections, it has decided to give a fresh push to these proposed laws in the newly-constituted Lok Sabha.
These ordinances will have to be converted into laws within 45 days of the beginning of the session, else they will lapse.
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Over 17,000 people went missing in Delhi in 2024: NCRB
New Delhi (PTI): A total of 23,058 people, comprising 9,482 men and 13,576 women, were reported missing in Delhi in 2024, according to the latest National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB).
Of the total, 5,491 were children below the age of 18 — 1,571 boys, 3,920 girls.
The city recorded 17,567 fresh adult missing persons cases in 2024, comprising 7,911 men and 9,656 women.
According to the NCRB data, released on Wednesday, 14,637 men, 18,238 women and six transgender persons were still missing from previous years.
At the latest count, in 2024, Delhi had a total of 55,939 missing persons cases — 24,119 men, 31,814 women and six transgender persons.
In 2024, police traced or collected 28,392 missing persons, including 12,182 men, 16,208 women and two transgender persons.
Only half of the men and half of the women who went missing could be traced.
A total of 27,547 missing persons – 11,937 men, 15,606 women, four transgender persons — were yet to be untraced by the end of the year, the data showed.
The data also revealed that 5,352 children from previous years remained untraced at the beginning of 2024.
The number of still missing boys was 1,621, and the number of missing girls was 3,729. Two transgender children were yet to be found.
After adding the pending cases from previous years, the total number of missing children cases handled in 2024 rose to 10,843.
The police traced or recovered 6,762 missing children — 2,030 boys, 4,732 girls.
The recovery rate stood at 63.6 per cent for boys and 61.9 per cent for girls, while no transgender child was traced.
By the end of 2024, a total of 4,081 children remained untraced, 1,162 of them boys, 2,917 girls, and two transgender children.
