The Right to Education of Girl Children in India: A Constitutional and Human Rights Perspective

Article 21A of the Constitution guarantees free and compulsory education to children aged six to fourteen. The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act 2009 gives statutory effect to that guarantee. For girls, however, formal admission is only one part of the right. Attendance and completion may still be undermined by inadequate sanitation, unsafe travel, early marriage, unpaid care work, and household decisions that give boys’ education priority. This paper asks whether India’s constitutional and statutory framework makes girls’ education an effective and enforceable entitlement, or whether important aspects remain dependent on policy choices and uneven implementation. The paper examines the constitutional framework, the development of judicial doctrine from Mohini Jain v. State of Karnataka to Dr Jaya Thakur v. Government of India (2026), India’s obligations under the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), and official education statistics. It argues that the legal framework increasingly supports substantive equality, but three weaknesses persist: Article 21A’s age limit, the gap between judicial directions and conditions in schools, and the absence of a clear statutory duty to prevent and respond to girls’ dropout. It proposes an “enabling conditions” approach that links the right to education with the practical conditions required for girls to enter, attend, remain in, and complete school.