BUDGET SESSION BEGINS IN RAJ ON STORMY NOTE; BJP DEMANDS CBI PROBE INTO REET
JAIPUR: The Budget session of the Rajasthan Assembly began on Wednesday with governor Kalraj Mishra highlighting the state government’s achievements in his address in the House and the opposition BJP demanding a CBI probe into the REET paper leak scandal.
Despite the governor asking them to sit down, the BJP members, who wore black bands on their arms, kept standing in their places as a mark of protest.
Three Rashtriya Loktantrik Party (RLP) MLAs also entered the well of the House over the REET paper leak issue and staged a walkout. However, there was no disruption and the governor completed his address in nearly an hour.
Mishra lauded the state government for its management of the COVID-19 pandemic and said it had emerged as a “role model”.
During the pandemic, 33 lakh poor families were given financial assistance of₹5,500 each with total spending of ₹1,815 crore, he said. The state also developed the capacity to conduct 1.45 lakh RT-PCR tests and the health infrastructure was strengthened, he added.
The governor said the state government waived farmers’ loans worth ₹8,181 crore from cooperative banks.
Apart from this, the government settled an outstanding payment of ₹6,000 crore of the previous government. With this, the government has waived farmers’ loans worth more than ₹14,000 crore in all.
On the state government’s ‘I Am Shakti Yojana’ to distribute free sanitary napkins to girls, Mishra said it is the beginning of a change.
Earlier, there was hesitation in society in talking about menstruation and menstrual hygiene, which resulted in women contracting diseases.
BHOPAL: There is no proposal under consideration to ban hijab worn by Muslim girls from schools, Madhya Pradesh home minister Narottam Mishra said on Wednesday, playing down controversy around the issue that has rocked Karnataka.
Mishra’s statement came a day after Madhya Pradesh’s school education minister Inder Singh Parmar said hijab should be banned from schools in the state, adding it is not part of the (uniform) dress code. “MP state government will apply a strict dress code for a sense of equality and discipline among students in schools. From the next session, we will issue rules and regulations related to the uniform dress codes. Hijab is not part of the uniform and it should be banned in MP. We will definitely ban it in MP after inspecting it,”
Parmar said on Tuesday.
However, Mishra said there was no controversy about hijab in the state, adding that the matter was pending before the Karnataka high court.
On Wednesday, Parmar, however, changed his instance and said he was only talking about implementing strict uniform dress code and nothing else.
Parmar’s statement on Tuesday came under severe criticism from several opposition leaders and civil society members, who accused him of “politicising” the matter. The hijab row turned violent in the southern state of Karnataka on Tuesday, with reports of student groups with opposing views on the matter clashing with each other at several educational institutions making headlines.
The controversy began in January at a government high school in Udupi district of Karnataka, where six students wearing hijab were allegedly stopped from attending classes. The issue has since spread to other parts of the southern state, with some student sporting saffron shawls and turbans, while others wearing blue scarves around their necks.
The row has taken a political dimension, as the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the state came out strongly in support of uniform dress codes in educational institutions.
ON TUESDAY, ANOTHER MP MINISTER SAID HIJAB SHOULD BE BANNED FROM SCHOOLS