Grant for girls lapse due to lack of guidelines

The state woman and child welfare department led by Pankaja Munde had relaunched a scheme ‘Mazi Kanya Bhagyashree’ by replacing it with the erstwhile government’s ‘Mazi Kanya Sukanya’ in April 2016.

However, the scheme was not successful due to a lack of clear guidelines. In the last financial year of 201617, the Rs 25 crore provision was made in the state budget for beneficiaries under this scheme, but this lapsed due to no clear instructions.

The state cabinet has now approved a revised policy of scheme ‘Mazi Kanya Bhagyashree’, after failure for a year. The revised scheme aimed to improve girl child sex ratio, to curb sex determination, female foeticide and improve female literacy rate in the state.

According to revised scheme, families which have yearly income up to Rs 7.5 lakh can apply for the scheme. Earlier, the scheme was limited for below poverty line (BPL) families having annual income up to Rs 1 lakh.

While clarifying, Munde said there was confusion over the implementation process but now it has been simplified. “The benefit will be given if parent would go for contraceptive procedure after one or two girl children while it won’t apply for third child whether it could be girl,” said Munde.

The reason for increasing the income criteria for the beneficiary, Munde said incidents of female foeticide occur in well-to-do families and not in poor families, who obviously cannot afford sex determination tests.

“Poor people could not afford sex child determination tests, so their women end up giving birth to a child irrespective of the gender, which is why tribal community has better girl child ratio,” said Munde.

The state will also give a reward of Rs 5 lakh to the gram panchayat (village) which will improve the girl child sex ratio, which will be more than 1,000 girl child against 1,000 boys.