Punjab Govt bringing law to counter NRI Grooms who desert their Wives in India

In Punjab, the NRI grooms are notorious for deserting wives in India. The people in Punjab are also obsessed about marrying NRIs and going abroad and for that they do whatever it takes to find and hook onto such a groom. Many times it doesn’t work out. Not only is the girl deserted, but the in-laws have extracted a heck of a lot of money as well from the bride’s family by then. This needs to be stopped. And now, after so many years the Punjab Government is proposing some measures.

15,000 women in the state have been deserted in the last two decades by husbands who live abroad. The government has proposed a new law that makes it compulsory for all marriages to be registered in court.

The proposal that will be introduced in the Punjab Assembly last week states that any Non-Resident Indian marrying a woman from Punjab will have to fill a special form when the marriage is registered. “All the information about the groom will be kept as a record with the local officials so that if there is some problem, we can contact the concerned person,” said Bikram Majithia, the minister in charge of all matters linked to Non-Resident Indians or NRIs. (Source)

There are somethings that every bride’s family needs to do:

Educate their daughters and make them financially independent. No woman should be at the mercy of someone else
Stop obsessing about going to “phoren”. It isn’t always worth it!
If you do marry your daughter to an NRI, know him well! No matter what he says or his family projects.
And, do register your marriage.

More than any regulation, this issue will be best tackled at the demand level itself.