Digital Marriage and Divorce Registration to Help Prevent Child Marriage, Polygamy and Fraud: Law Minister

Law, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Md Asaduzzaman has said that introducing digital registration of marriages and divorces will make it easier to prevent child marriage, polygamy, fake marriage certificates and various forms of marriage-related fraud. He also said the system would allow people to quickly verify marriage and divorce information and obtain digital certificates.

The minister made the remarks as the chief guest at a signing ceremony for a memorandum of understanding (MoU) between the “Civil Registration and Vital Statistics: ICT Infrastructure Development for Marriage and Divorce Registration” project, being implemented under the Law and Justice Division, and BRAC. The ceremony was held on Wednesday at the conference room of the Law Ministry Secretariat.

“We want to move forward. If innovative ideas come before us, we want to adopt them and advance towards public welfare. That is our goal,” the law minister said. He said BRAC has been working at the grassroots level for a long time to prevent child marriage and promote women’s rights. The initiative was taken to utilise the organisation’s experience and expertise.

Under the project, online marriage and divorce registration will initially be introduced in 102 unions across 10 upazilas in 10 districts. The pilot upazilas are Kaliganj in Gazipur, Tungipara in Gopalganj, Jhenaigati in Sherpur, Sadar in Kurigram, Sundarganj in Gaibandha, Sadar in Narail, Kasba in Brahmanbaria, Sadar in Sylhet, Chakaria in Cox’s Bazar and Sadar in Kishoreganj. Under the project, citizens’ age and identity will be verified through interconnection with the National Identity Card (NID) and birth and death registration databases. This will help prevent child marriage and make it easier to detect and prevent secret marriages, polygamy and marriage-related fraud.

Marriage and divorce information will be stored in real time under the system. It will also provide facilities for issuing digital certificates quickly. Officials expect this to reduce the time and inconvenience faced by citizens when verifying marriage and divorce information.

Around 95 percent of the development work on the online marriage registration software under the project has been completed. A cloud server has been allocated from the National Data Centre. API connections have also been established with the birth and death registration and NID databases. In addition, Sonali Bank’s payment gateway and biometric devices have been connected on a trial basis. The law minister said around Tk 11 crore would be spent on implementing the pilot project. The agreement will remain in effect from September 30, 2026, to June 30, 2027.

Project Director Md Azizul Haque and BRAC Director of the Social Empowerment and Legal Protection Programme Shashwoti Biplob signed the MoU.