Senior advocate and amicus curiae Indira Jaising has urged the Supreme Court to reduce the legal age of sexual consent from 18 to 16 years. She argued that consensual sexual relationships between teenagers aged 16 to 18 should not be criminalized under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act and IPC Section 375. Jaising is assisting the court in the ongoing case of Nipun Saxena vs Union of India.
In her written submission, Jaising said current laws wrongly label romantic relationships between adolescents as criminal acts, violating their constitutional rights. She stated that teenagers today are capable of making informed decisions and that consensual relationships must not be treated as exploitative. Jaising pointed out that the age of consent was 16 for nearly 70 years and was raised to 18 in 2013 without open debate, despite the Justice Verma Committee’s recommendation to keep it at 16.
Citing data from the National Family Health Survey, she noted that teenage sexual activity is not uncommon and that POCSO cases involving 16–18-year-olds surged by 180% between 2017 and 2021. Most complaints, she argued, are filed by parents, often in inter-caste or interfaith relationships, not by the minors themselves. As a result, many teenagers are forced into hiding or early marriages out of fear of legal consequences.
Jaising proposed introducing a “close-in-age exception” to decriminalize consensual sex between teenagers. She also cited international legal precedents like the UK’s Gillick case and India’s Puttaswamy judgment, which recognize privacy and decision-making autonomy as fundamental rights.
Highlighting rulings by Bombay, Madras, and Meghalaya High Courts, she emphasized that not all underage sexual relations are coercive and called for the law to distinguish between consent and exploitation. Jaising also requested a review of POCSO’s Section 19, which mandates reporting, arguing that it deters teens from seeking medical help.
She concluded that sexual autonomy is a part of human dignity and denying teenagers the right to bodily choices violates Articles 14, 15, 19, and 21 of the Constitution.
