Despite a budget of Rs3,000 crore for the Nirbhaya fund, the Centre is grappling with an acute lack of ‘viable’ projects for enhancing the women safety net in the country. In the last three years, the Government has given away just Rs23 crore of the Nirbhaya fund for the rape crises centres.
The Woman and Child Development Ministry, which is the nodal Ministry for disbursement of Nirbhaya funds, cites lack of ‘worthwhile’ projects for non-utilisation of funds.
“We keep receiving proposals from various agencies under the different Ministries but we have not found anything worthwhile which will effectively work towards serving the purpose of upping women safety infrastructure,” said an official from the WCD Ministry.
“So far, we have set aside about Rs23 crore for the building of 36 rape crises centres in all States and Union Territories. About three are operational and the rest should be ready by the end of December, this year,” said the official.
The official said that several Ministries — including the Information Technology, Ministries of Road Transport and Highways, and Home Affairs have submitted proposals but are pending approvals.
Since its inception of the fund in 2012, the Government has doled out just about 13 per cent of the total corpus.
The Nirbhaya fund pool was set up by the UPA Government after the gruesome gang rape of a medico in a moving bus in the Capital on December 16, 2012.
The Nirbhaya fund has a total of Rs3,000 crore as Rs1,000 crore each was allocated to it in 2014-15 and 2015-16 on top of Rs1,000 crore initial corpus.
Earlier the Home Ministry was the nodal Ministry for Nirbhaya funds, but in April this year the WCD Ministry replaced it on the grounds since it understood the problems of the women better and hence would be a better judge to disburse the funds.
The Centre issued fresh guidelines for utilisation of the funds according to which various departments could seek money from the WCD Ministry for schemes to improve safety and security for women in the country.Issuing the guidelines, the Finance Ministry said the WCD ministry would appraise these schemes to decide their suitability to qualify for getting funds from the Nirbhaya Fund.