Child star of 'Balika Vadhu' campaigns against child marriage

Jodhpur, Apr 22 (ANI): Young television actor Avika Gaur motivated school children here to take a pledge against child marriage.Avika interestingly plays a child bride herself in the poplar soap opera, 'Balika Vadhu'.

"I am too young to talk about it, but I know that this is a bad thing. Like it is shown on my show that an eight year old is married. She has to be away from her parents, leave her studies, which are very important. She leaves her friends and was given responsibilities, which she was unable to understand. She just had to sit with her head covered. This is a bad thing," she said.

She campaigned against child marriage and made people take a pledge to neither be involved in child marriage nor let child marriages happen.The writer of the show accompanied her. Thousands of school students were present to support the cause and take the pledge."I just want to say that the government legislating laws against child marriage and implementing them is not enough. We all need to understand the pain these children go through. They are robbed of their childhood. There needs to be social uprising against this custom so that it stops," said Purnendu Shekhar, the writer of the television show.According to last official census in 2001, 6.4 million persons under the age of 18 were married, with Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh accounting for a large chunk of such marriages. By Yogesh (ANI)