Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR) has put on hold the introduction of a Bill on regulating the marriages of older Arab men to young Muslim girls from Hyderabad, due to pressure from local Muslim groups and some Islamic scholars, who see the move as interference in their personal laws. Through a comprehensive law, the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) government wanted to deal with the social evil of older Arabs exploiting poor and minor Muslim girls in the name of marriage.

The government was scheduled to present the Bill before the Business Advisory Committee (BAC) of the Legislative Assembly, which met to finalise the agenda for the 50-day-long winter session, which started here on Friday, 27 October. The Law Department, which was asked by the Chief Minister to prepare the draft, readied it. But it was not made part of the list of government business at the last minute, sources said.

The government has come down heavily against several Arab grooms, marriage brokers and qazis in the city in the past three months. In July and August, the city police arrested 19 Arab men from the Gulf, on charges of trying to wed minor girls by offering money to their parents. Hyderabad’s Old City has been a hunting ground for Arab grooms for long.

The Chief Minister instructed the Minority Welfare and Law Departments to come up with the Bill, as the present laws are not enough to deal with Arab men who try to marry local girls illegally. The qazis are supposed to register all such marriages with the Wakf Board, but that does not happen in these cases.

The Law Department, after getting a nod from the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), prepared a draft law to check unauthorised Arab marriages with Indian girls. According to a senior Telangana Law Department official, the draft Bill has been readied with stringent provisions like compulsory registration of all Arab men who want to marry Indian girls.

The draft law has provisions such as checking the age and the health of the grooms, apart from seeking proof of their financial status and residential details with the help of Indian consulates in the Arab countries. The draft law also requires the groom to deposit a minimum of Rs 10 lakh with the Wakf Board. The draft Bill has stipulated that minors cannot be married off and that the age difference between the groom and the bride should not be more than 20 years.

When contents of the draft were circulated among Muslim leaders and religious groups, there was a mixed response. While some welcomed the provisions, religious groups objected to the Bill by saying that it was trying to regulate matters pertaining to Muslim personal laws. Moreover, they cited the overall poverty of the parents of local Muslim girls as a reason why all Arab marriages should not be banned.

Two major meetings that took place in the city in the last one week made the government backtrack on the Arab marriages regulation Bill. First was a gathering of Islamic scholars and experts, including Jamat Ul Ulema’s Mufti Abdul Mughni Mazarari and Maulana Syed Tariq Quadri, a former member of Andhra Pradesh Minorities Commission. The meeting resolved to oppose the law being made by the government, apparently because such a law would hurt the image of Indian Muslims among Muslims globally, and affect the prospects of local girls getting married to grooms abroad. Speakers at the meeting talked of the weak economic conditions of the parents who wanted to marry off their girls to Arab men. But the meeting also decided to self-regulate all illegal and exploitative marriages with Arab men and ensure that underage girls were not married off. The religious leaders, while calling for an end to social evils such as dowry among Muslims—so that governments would not need to interfere in such matters—also thanked the Chief Minister for showing an interest in curbing exploitative Arab marriages.

The other meeting was the one where KCR interacted with Muslim leaders from Hyderabad, including Deputy Chief Minister Mohammad Mahmood Ali and All India Majlis Ittehadul Muslimneen MP Asaduddin Owaisi, among others. At this meeting, KCR proposed several welfare and developmental measures like a separate IT corridor for Muslims on the city’s outskirts, 10% quota in housing, etc.

Representatives of around half a dozen Muslim religious organisations have welcomed the proposals and thanked the Chief Minister, but urged him not to rush through the Bill. According to sources close to the Deputy Chief Minister, KCR has agreed to put on hold the law if the community is ready to check illegal marriages and the exploitation of poor Muslim girls.