The Lok Sabha on Friday took up for discussion a private member’s bill, introduced by Congress MP Jasbir Singh Gill in January 2020, that seeks to put a limit on the number of guests to be invited and dishes to be served at the weddings.
The Prevention of Wasteful Expenditure on Special Occasions Bill 2020 seeks that the guests invited to a wedding from both the families of the bride and the groom should not exceed 100; number of dishes served should not exceed 10; and the worth of gifts should not exceed Rs 2,500.
It also seeks that instead of extravagant gifts, donations should be made for the poor, needy, orphans or weaker sections of society or to the NGOs.
Gill, MP from Khadoor Sahib in Punjab, said that the Bill seeks to end the culture of extravagant weddings that puts a lot of financial burden on the families, especially the bride’s, and adds that the cut in the “wasteful expenditure” would go a long way in checking female foeticide.
“I came across stories of how people had to sell their plots, properties and opt for bank loans to solemnize marriages in a lavish manner. The cut in wasteful expenditure on marriages could go a long way in checking female foeticide, as a girl child then would not be seen as a burden,” said Gill, explaining the rationale behind the Bill.
The MP said that the idea behind the Bill came to him after he attended a wedding in Phagwara in 2019.
“There were dishes in as many as 285 trays. I noticed that no one had taken out even a spoonful from many as 129 such trays. It all went to waste,” Gill explained.
After introducing the Bill, Gill said that he implemented it in his family first when he married off his son and daughter this year, in the presence of only 30-40 guests.
This is not the first time that an attempt has been made to bring the “big fat Indian wedding” under the ambit of the law and cap the expenditure incurred on them.
Earlier, BJP’s Gopal Chinayya Shetty, the Lok Sabha MP from Mumbai North, had in December 2017 introduced a private member bill seeking “prevention and prohibition on the extravagant expenses incurred on marriages”. His Bill sought to provide for the “prevention and prohibition of sheer extravagance and unlimited expenditure being incurred on marriages and related ceremonies in various parts of the country and for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto”.
In 2017, Congress MP Ranjeet Ranjan had introduced The Marriages (Compulsory Registration and Prevention of Wasteful Expenditure) Bill, 2016 to put a limit on the number of guests to be invited and dishes to be served at weddings.