City-based university organizes seminar on gender-specific laws

VADODARA: City-based Navrachana University, Vadodara on Saturday organized a seminar – ‘From discrimination to incrimination : The use, abuse and misuse of gender specific laws’. The seminar was aimed at providing a dialectical platform to discuss issues relating to the abuse of laws by women vis a vis the “rights of men”. The workshop was intended to provide valuable insight into the present subject matter from the perspective of eminent activists, lawyers, and law enforcers.
The keynote speaker on the occasion was retired justice P B Majmudar, who has previously served in the high courts of Gujarat, Rajasthan and Bombay.He spoke about the archaic nature of laws in India and how there is a need for change in gender specific laws and about how men can be more empowered toward the abuse of laws by women.
Mandakini Jha, another speaker, provided a statistical analysis on the plight of the girl child and women in India, thus forming a foundation for her speech on gender specific laws. She spoke about how the Indian society is dominated by patriarchy and how women are often shunned or looked over when it comes to important decisions, in their own homes as well as their conjugal right.
Hardik Mehta, the founder president of Marital Justice Organization focused on section 498A of the Indian Penal Code and how it is often used wrongfully in order to get men into trouble.