BIKANER, Oct. 20 -- Preventing child marriages will now be part of the job of government school heads in Rajasthan, adding a legal responsibility beyond teaching and school administration. They will be required to intervene against child marriages in their designated areas, collect evidence for prosecution, counsel families and spread awareness about the practice. An order (HT has a copy) issued by Secondary Education Director- Lalit Kumar on Tuesday, directs government school heads to discharge responsibilities as Child Marriage Prohibition Officers (CMPOs) under a state notification. In rural areas, the jurisdiction of a school head will cover the gram panchayat where the school is located, while in urban areas it will extend to the municipal ward concerned. Gram Vikas Adhikaris (Village Development Officers) and patwaris have also been assigned the same responsibility in their respective jurisdictions. The legal duties go beyond monitoring. Under Section 16 of the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006, CMPOs are required to prevent child marriages by taking appropriate action, collect evidence to support prosecution, counsel individuals and communities against facilitating such marriages, create awareness about their harmful consequences and submit periodic returns and statistics as directed by the government. The Rajasthan government's April 24, 2026, gazette notification, published on May 14, designated the specified school heads and revenue and panchayati raj officials as CMPOs. The October 13 education department order provides directions for implementing the arrangement in schools. The notification also confers specified investigative powers relating to cognisable offences under the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, subject to the conditions and limitations laid down in the notification. The precise extent of these powers must be distinguished from the general duty to prevent child marriages, the designation does not mean that school heads have unrestricted police powers. The move has drawn objections from teacher organisations, which say that assigning additional administrative and enforcement responsibilities to school heads could affect academic work. They argue that schools already have teaching duties and other departmental assignments to fulfil. Ravi Acharya, state secretary of the Akhil Bharatiya Rashtriya Shaikshik Mahasangh (Rajasthan School Education), opposed the move, saying teachers had already been assigned around 50 responsibilities apart from teaching. Teachers are increasingly being burdened with non-teaching duties. Assigning them another legal responsibility will further affect their primary role of teaching and the academic work of schools, he said. The new arrangement has placed the school heads at the frontline of prevention at the local level, alongside officials from the revenue and panchayati raj departments. Its implementation will require coordination with the police and district administration when information about a proposed child marriage is received....