Bal Vivah Mukt Bharat

What is Bal Vivah Mukt Bharat?

Bal Vivah Mukt Bharat is a national campaign of the Ministry of Women and Child Development to end child marriage in India. The Union Minister for Women and Child Development launched it on 27 November 2024, along with the Child Marriage Free Bharat portal at stopchildmarriage.wcd.gov.in.

Bal Vivah Mukt Bharat is not a benefit scheme. There is no beneficiary list, no application form and no money to claim. What the campaign gives a citizen is a working route to stop a child marriage, an online complaint channel, a directory of the officials legally supported to intervene, and helpline numbers that operate round the clock.

Targets and approach

• Make India child marriage-free by 2030, with an interim goal of reducing prevalence by 10 per cent.
• Priority to 257 high-burden districts identified from NFHS-5 data, where prevalence is at or above the national average.
• Fully funded by the Ministry of Women and Child Development.
• Run on a "whole of government, whole of society" approach: district task forces, Child Marriage Prohibition Officers, panchayats, faith leaders, schools and marriage service providers.

According to the campaign portal, over 40 lakh citizens have taken the online pledge against child marriage.

Who is eligible to act under Bal Vivah Mukt Bharat?

Any citizen can file a complaint. You do not have to be a relative of the child, a resident of the district, or a member of any organisation. Complaints are free.

The people the campaign protects are:

• Girls below 18 years and boys below 21 years who are being married or are at risk of being married, since the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006 fixes those as the minimum ages.
• Children already in a child marriage, who can seek annulment and support services.

What this campaign cannot do:

• You cannot apply for a cash benefit. No one is eligible for money under Bal Vivah Mukt Bharat, because it does not disburse any. If someone asks for a fee or promises a payout under this campaign, it is a fraud.
• Adults over the legal age are not eligible to use this route for a marital dispute. Adult women facing domestic violence or forced marriage should use the women helpline 181, a One Stop Centre, or the police on 112.

What information should a complaint contain?

How to apply for help or report a child marriage

1. Open the Bal Vivah Mukt Bharat portal at stopchildmarriage.wcd.gov.in and go to the public complaint page at stopchildmarriage.wcd.gov.in/publicComplaint.
2. Enter the location details, state, district, block or ward, and the village or locality where the marriage is planned.
3. Give the date or expected date of the marriage and whatever you know about the child's age. Do not delay the complaint to gather proof.
4. Add your contact details if you are willing; the portal accepts complaints without identifying the complainant.
5. Submit the complaint and note the reference shown on screen.
6. If the marriage is imminent or the child is in immediate danger, also call 1098 (child helpline) or 112 (emergency) at once. A phone call reaches the district machinery faster than a written complaint.
7. If you need the official directly, use the portal's Child Marriage Prohibition Officer directory to find the CMPO for that district.

Complaints can also be emailed through the address published on the campaign portal.

Which helpline should you call?

• 1098: Child Helpline, for any child in distress, including a child marriage.
• 181: Women Helpline.
• 112; Emergency Response Support System, for an immediate police response.
• 15100; NALSA legal services helpline, for legal aid.
• 1930 — National cyber crime helpline, if the case involves online grooming or trafficking.

What the law says

The Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006 sets the minimum age of marriage at 18 years for women and 21 years for men. Adults who perform, conduct, direct or abet a child marriage, and parents or guardians who permit or fail to prevent one, are liable to rigorous imprisonment of up to two years, a fine of up to Rs 1 lakh, or both.

The Act requires every state to appoint Child Marriage Prohibition Officers, who can prevent a marriage, collect evidence and assist the child. The Bal Vivah Mukt Bharat portal maintains a centralised national directory of CMPOs so that citizens can reach the right officer without going through the district office first.

How the 100-day campaign was run

The Ministry ran an intensive 100-day campaign from 27 November 2025 to 8 March 2026, structured in three spells:

1. 27 November to 31 December 2025; awareness in schools, colleges and universities, with debates, essay competitions and pledge ceremonies.
2. 1 to 31 January 2026: engagement with faith leaders, community influencers and marriage service providers such as caterers, priests and banquet halls.
3. 1 February to 8 March 2026, mobilisation of Gram Panchayats and municipal wards to pass resolutions declaring themselves child-marriage-free.

Chief Secretaries constituted district-level task forces involving CMPOs, NGOs and Panchayati Raj institutions, with weekly monitoring and geo-tagged reporting through the campaign portal.

Related schemes and where to get help

• Mission Shakti, the umbrella for women's safety and empowerment, covering One Stop Centres and the women helpline.
• Mission Vatsalya; child protection services, including the child helpline 1098 and District Child Protection Units.
• Beti Bachao Beti Padhao, awareness and education for the girl child.
• Sukanya Samriddhi Account: savings for a girl child's education and marriage after she turns 18.

Each is covered separately on this site. Reporting a child marriage costs nothing, and no official will ask you for a payment to act on your complaint.

How to check your complaint status

Bal Vivah Mukt Bharat does not issue an application that gets approved or rejected in the usual scheme sense, but a complaint filed on the portal or through a helpline does move through stages, and a complainant can and should follow up.

1. Keep the reference number. When a complaint is submitted at stopchildmarriage.wcd.gov.in/publicComplaint, the portal shows a reference or acknowledgement number on screen. Note it down or screenshot it; without this number, follow-up is much harder since complaints can be filed without a name or phone number.
2. Call back on the same channel you used. If the complaint went in through 1098, 181 or 112, call the same helpline again and quote the date, time and district of the earlier call. These helplines log every call and can check whether it was passed on to the district machinery.
3. Contact the Child Marriage Prohibition Officer (CMPO) directly. The portal's CMPO directory lists the officer for each district. A complainant who gave contact details, or who is willing to follow up in person, can call the CMPO to ask whether action has been taken, such as a visit to the family or a formal notice.
4. Escalate through the District Child Protection Unit or Childline if the CMPO is unreachable or the marriage date is very close. Childline (1098) offices operate at the district level and can push an urgent case when a portal complaint alone has not produced a visible response.
5. Watch for the outcome, not a status label. Because there is no login-based tracking dashboard for individual complaints, the practical way to "check status" is to confirm one of three things happened: the marriage was stopped or postponed, the family was counselled, or a First Information Report was registered under the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006. Any of these confirms the complaint reached someone with authority to act.

If a complaint concerns an emergency, that is, the marriage is scheduled within a day or two, do not wait for a callback. Calling 1098 or 112 again and asking for the CMPO's mobile number is more effective than repeatedly refreshing the web complaint.

Common reasons a complaint does not lead to action

Because Bal Vivah Mukt Bharat has no approval or rejection process like a benefit scheme, a complaint "failing" usually means it did not translate into a visit, an FIR, or the marriage being stopped. The real, recurring reasons this happens, and the fix for each, are below.

• Location details are too vague. A complaint that names only a district, without the village, ward or at least a landmark, is hard for a CMPO to act on quickly. Fix: give the most specific location available, even an approximate one such as "near the government school in X village," rather than waiting to confirm the exact address.
• The complaint is filed after the marriage has already happened. Once a marriage is solemnised, the CMPO's power shifts from prevention to post-marriage support and prosecution, which moves slower and needs more evidence. Fix: report as soon as a wedding is being planned or invitations have gone out, not after the ceremony.
• No way to reach the complainant for follow-up. Anonymous complaints are accepted and are valid, but when a CMPO needs to confirm a detail, such as the exact date, an anonymous complaint with no contact number can stall. Fix: if safety allows, leave a phone number, even one that is not the complainant's own, such as a trusted neighbour's.
• The complaint reaches only one channel and is not escalated. A single online submission with no follow-up call can sit in a queue behind the district's other cases, especially in the 257 high-burden districts where volumes are higher. Fix: file the online complaint and also call 1098 or 112 for anything time-sensitive; the two channels reach different parts of the response system.
• Confusing this with a family court or marital dispute process. Complaints about an adult's unhappy marriage, dowry, or domestic violence are not within the scope of the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act and will not be actioned as a child marriage case. Fix: use the women helpline 181 or the nearest police station for adult marital disputes, and reserve Bal Vivah Mukt Bharat channels for cases where the bride is under 18 or the groom is under 21.
• Fear of retaliation stops evidence from being shared. Families and neighbours sometimes report a marriage but then decline to confirm details when a CMPO visits, out of fear of the family involved, which can cause an officer to close the matter for lack of corroboration. Fix: a complaint can stay anonymous throughout; the complainant is never required to appear in person or be named to the family for the CMPO to investigate.