Mehsana district’s health department recorded 131 pregnancies among girls aged 13 to 17, tracked through antenatal care registrations between April and July 22, 2026, according to Gujarat Samachar. Of those, 8 girls were 15 years old, 43 were 16, and 80 were 17. Kadi taluka reportedly logged the highest count, per Trishul News, which independently confirmed the district-wide figures.
Context: this is not a one-off number
The four-month count follows a larger tally reported for 2025: Mehsana’s health department recorded 341 minor pregnancies between April and December that year, including a case involving a 12-year-old, according to ETV Bharat. Read together, the two reports suggest a persistent pattern rather than an isolated spike. Officials and local reporting attribute much of it to child marriage still practised in parts of the district, despite the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act setting 18 as the legal minimum age for girls to marry.
These figures come from antenatal registrations, meaning they capture pregnancies that reached a government health worker or facility. They likely undercount the true scale, since families who marry off minor daughters informally, or who avoid formal healthcare, would not appear in this data at all.
What it means for Gujarat residents
A minor pregnancy carries elevated medical risk for both mother and child, and it almost always ends a girl’s schooling. Where child marriage drives these numbers, as officials suggest it does in Mehsana, it also signals that enforcement of India’s child marriage law is not reaching households in the district, particularly in rural talukas like Kadi. For residents, the practical questions are what the district administration does next: whether panchayat-level monitoring improves, whether schools and anganwadi workers get resources to flag at-risk girls earlier, and whether prosecutions follow when child marriages are reported. None of that is guaranteed by the health department simply publishing the numbers.
Gujarat is not alone in this. Neighbouring states have reported comparable patterns tied to child marriage and, in some cases, sexual offences against minors, suggesting Mehsana’s numbers reflect a wider regional problem rather than a local anomaly.
Outlook
Watch for whether Mehsana’s district administration responds with a specific action plan, given that this is now the second consecutive reporting period showing triple-digit minor pregnancy counts. Advocacy groups working on child marriage in Gujarat are likely to press for stronger enforcement and for anganwadi and school-level tracking that catches at-risk girls before a pregnancy is registered, not after.
Sources: Gujarat Samachar, Trishul News, ETV Bharat
This report was compiled and written with AI assistance from publicly reported sources, and reviewed for accuracy.