Matrimonial portals to verify ‘intent’ of applicants

These questions will focus on establishing whether the applicant is serious about marriage or not and also gauge his/her psyche. “Now, these websites will have to carry mandatory questions to assess the ‘intent’ of the applicant. This is to understand whether they are serious about getting married. Also, these web portals have been told that they must carry a disclaimer – stating that these websites are ‘only’ meant for matrimonial purposes,” an official from the WCD Ministry told Millennium Post.

In an attempt to curtail the menace of dubious profiles on matrimonial websites, the WCD Ministry, after an inter-ministerial meeting on Tuesday, constituted a committee to address the issue and submit a report on it. “The meeting was attended by officials from WCD ministry, Ministry of Information Technology and Ministry of Home Affairs and also stakeholders from the matrimonial web portals. The committee will look into rectifying this menace and after it submits its report we will issue guidelines,” said the official. On the issue of verifying details submitted by prospective matches on these profiles, the official said, “These are issues we need to go into greater detail and the committee will address such concerns and submit it in the report.”

“The committee which has been constituted under Vandana Gupta, Joint Secretary in the WCD Ministry and has officials from ministries of WCD, Home and IT and also stakeholders from the matrimonial web portals. They will focus on the cases related to fraud reported by users on these websites, based on which guidelines can be prepared ahead,” added the official.

Spearheading this initiative by the Minister of Women and Child development, Maneka Sanjay Gandhi had told Millennium Post, “This is a very serious issue (reference to cases of duping and fraud) and severe action should be taken against these people (matrimonial websites) because they need to address the concerns of the people who are being harassed through their websites.” 

Millennium Post had reported on 12 August 2015, in the story titled - “Matrimonial portals set to face the music over dubious profiles” on the issue.

“Under the Information Technology Act there are ‘due diligence guidelines’ which are in place and are being followed by cyber cafes. These are also applicable for these websites. As these web portals are actually intermediaries and need to follow the guidelines set for ‘intermediaries’ under the IT Act. We have told them to follow them. Earlier they weren’t aware of these existing guidelines, “added the official.