Patna, July 10 (IANS): Bihar accounts for 69 percent of child marriages, with girls being married off before reaching 18 years of legal marriageable age, a child rights NGO official said here on Friday.

"Bihar's Jamui district has the highest percentage of under-18 married girls, closely followed by Banka, Nawada, West Champaran and Samastipur districts," Saradindu Bandyopadhyay, CRY operations in-charge in Bihar, told IANS on the sidelines of a seminar.

Jamui accounts for over 70 percent of the girl-child marriages, as District Level Household Survey-3 data shows, followed by the districts of Nawada 65.3 percent, Banka 59 percent, West Champaran 57.8 percent and Samastipur 51 percent, the official added.

According to the latest official data, the states with the highest rates of child marriage are Bihar, Rajasthan, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. But even in low prevalence states there could be pockets with high rates of child marriage.