AHMEDABAD: NRI grooms flying down to marry Gujarati girls during this wedding season for 'chat mangni pat byah' may not be able to fly back immediately. As per new registration norms, NRI grooms will have to flash altered marital status on their passports, which is a measure to check the trend of fly-by-night weddings.
Authorities have introduced these measures to curb the menace of NRIs coming and marrying local girls while on vacation in India and then dumping them just before leaving the country.
Gujarat University has submitted a research on the menace of fly-by-night marriages to the state and central ministry and GOPIO authorities. And thanks to their efforts, the new rule now demands that an NRI who gets married in India has to alter his marital status on passport - a procedure which the local marriage registration bureau would do with add-on documentation on the groom's passport.
Dr Neerja Arun, director of the study abroad program, Gujarat University and Group of People of Indian Origin researcher on Indian Diaspora (GOPIO), who led the research on the menace of such marriages, said, "Due to alarming rise in failures of NRI weddings, we conducted a detailed research on what makes NRI grooms to come to India to get married. And we found that in majority of the cases it is parental pressure. NRI boys who are visiting their parents during holidays are often pressurized to marry a local girl. And hence they lack moral guts; they get into a marriage without taking it seriously and often do not get into legalities of registrations. On completion of holidays, they go away and their brides keep waiting. These abandoned - destitute women can not even file for a divorce as they are often helpless and do not know which legal route to take."
Researchers at the Gujarat University focused on this growing menace and submitted a detailed report to ministry of overseas Indians affairs (MOIA), Pravasi Dekh-Rekh Samiti, NGO in New Delhi and GOPIO about three years ago.
With this, the central ministry issued an add-on to the existing norms which now require NRI grooms getting married in India to get their marital status on passports altered before they leave, informed J C Sharma, former secretary of Union ministry of external affairs and a high-level committee of Indian Diaspora who was recently in city to inaugurate the local GOPIO chapter.
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