Contracting a second marriage without the permission of wife is common. When the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) dismissed the Women Protection Act 2006 and recommended to re-examine the Act in September last year, it encouraged the oppressors in a way.

At a shelter home, where no woman wants to be named because she does not want to add to her insecurities, came a woman to seek protection from thrashings of her husband. The husband, an Imam Masjid, was summoned by an NGO to share his side of the story.

The Imam from Gujranwala came and said he would beat his wife only as much as religion allowed.

Human rights activists ask where in the book is it written that, for example, house work is entirely a woman’s duty?

Recommendations of the CII have been impacting lives of ordinary women who consider the clerics’ rulings as word of law in rural areas in particular. The reality is that men do not ask for consent of their first wives in order to contract a second marriage. The CII’s recommendation to the government to waive off the requirement of consent from wife will further embolden such men who ride roughshod on women and hurt the institution of family.

An activist, on the condition of anonymity, insists on enforcing the law that makes it mandatory on men to seek permission from wife to marry another woman. She receives women day in and day out who come with complaints of ill-treatment at the hands of husbands, which include non-payment of enough money to meet the bare necessities of children and household.

"The list of women’s complaints is usually long," she says. "The man has only one thing to say about his estranged wife that she has a questionable character. Most of the women come to seek legal aid. They don’t give permission out of their own free will for second marriage to their husbands. Where permission is obtained, it is through fraudulent means. Women come to us to get maintenance cost mostly, for dowry articles," says a lawyer who deals with such women on a regular basis. "If a man cannot meet the needs of one wife how can he have another -- that would be putting lives of two women in jeopardy," says the activist.

Activists and lawyers who deal with aggrieved women say the state needs to put an end to such evil practices. "The CII’s rulings are regressive. By backing child marriage, they are promoting certain evils in the society. Watta Satta wherein people give a girl for a boy and vice versa in marriage, is most common in Punjab. The idea is to protect property and family but mostly this doesn’t work," she says, adding, "Underage marriages have wreaked havoc with the lives of many young people, depriving them of the joy of conjugal bond. Health issues also arise. Allowing people to marry off their children is like snatching the rights of an individual to have a fulfilling life."