Condoms, birth control pills in MP’s mass ‘wedding kits’
Condoms and contraceptive pills were found inside the “wedding kits” given to brides as part of the state government’s mass marriage initiative in Madhya Pradesh’s Thandla under Jhabua district on Monday, leaving the couples amuseddistrict.
A mass wedding event was organised under chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s Mukhyamantri Kanya Vivah/Nikah Yojana, a scheme for women from economically weaker sections, in Thandla where as many as 296 couples were wedded.
It might be a part of an awareness campaign by the health department on family planning, the chief executive officer of local district panchayat Bhurisingh Rawat told the media on Tuesday.
Sources said that there was no specific policy by the state government as to what items should be presented to the brides in the make-up boxes on the occasion.
“The local health department is involved in the programme to create awareness among the new couples on family planning and other health related issues.
The local health officials might have thought of the novel way of presenting the new couples birth control materials to create awareness among them on family planning”, a senior officer of the district told this newspaper, unwilling to be quoted. “It is an innovative idea to create awareness on family planning,” he added.
Girls from economically weaker sections are the beneficiaries of the scheme launched by Mr Chouhan during his first term in office in 2006.
Under the scheme, the government sponsors marriage of the girls from poor families and the beneficiaries under the scheme are given a financial assistance of `49,000 each, besides materials worth `6,000.
Last month, a controversy erupted in the mass wedding programme in Dindori district when some women, beneficiaries of the scheme, complained of being subjected to pregnancy tests by the local medical officers before their marriage.
However, the health officials said that they were following the practice of doing health check-ups of the beneficiaries before the wedding.