Even though Haryana is struggling with skewed sex ratio for the past many years, many MlAs on Thursday gave a miss to the three hours long discussion on ‘saving and educating the girl child’ in the State assembly. As the resolution to implement Prime Minister’s ambitious ‘Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao’ scheme was passed in the Haryana Assembly, a large number of MlAs including Cabinet Ministers were not present in the house.
The seriousness of the State leaders to deal with the issue of female foeticide, can be gauged from the fact that the Chief Minister and most of his Cabinet Ministers were not present in the Haryana Vidhan Sabha, which devoted three hours to discuss the topic of Beti Bachao-Beti Padhao on Thursday.
The Chief Minister who had left after the end of question hour at 11 am, later entered the house only few minutes before 2 pm, when the session was about to end. The State Health Minister Anil Vij, who himself attended the discussion for less than one hour, slammed the Congress legislators for remaining absent during an important issue.
All the Congress legislators had earlier staged a walk-out on the issue of re-naming of Government buildings named after former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. "”It is shameful that the Congress legislators are not present in the House to discuss this issue. I strongly condemn them”, said Vij while speaking in the House.
Meanwhile, many MlAs were seen moving out of the house when the discussion on ‘Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao’ began. At one time, there were less than 40 MlAs in the house during the debate. The discussion on the resolution moved by MlA Gian Chand Gupta saw more than 20 members giving their recommendations and sharing their personal experiences on the issue.
Most of the MlAs emphasised on the need of changing the mindset of the society towards girl child and recommended implementing a stringent law to take action against people involved in cases of female foeticide, promote girl education by running special buses and opening new schools, colleges, launching schemes to award villages with balanced sex ratio among others initiatives.
later, a resolution was unanimously passed to implement the Beti Bachao-Beti Padhao (BBBP) programme in the State. Haryana where the child sex ratio (CSR) has been dismally low, was chosen by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to launch the nationwide BBBP programme. The BBBP programme was launched from Haryana’s Panipat district and would be implemented in 12 districts of the State.
As per the data with state Health Department, the sex ratio was 877 girls per 1000 boys till November last year, higher than 833 girls per 1000 boys in 2011. The sex ratio in Haryana was 837, in the below six years of age category.