The girl students in Colleges of Haryana will be armed with pepper sprays for their self-defence. For, the Manohar lal Khattar Government in the state has decided to distribute pepper sprays to girl students on the occasion of Raksha Bandhan.
The State Government will organize a series of programmes in all government colleges to celebrate Raksha Bandhan, as a symbol of safety and protection of girls.
The series of activities including distribution of pepper spray to girls, self defence training, pledge on girls’ safety, signature campaign, empowerment rallies, open forum on gender sensitization among others have been planned by the Department of Higher Education, Haryana from August 23-25 to celebrate Raksha Bandhan as an occasion to commemorate womanhood.
Directions in this regard have also been issued to the Principals of all government colleges in the state.
The Colleges have been asked to distribute pepper sprays to girl students on August 25 and also, to ensure regular self defence training (atleast one month per semester) by coaches from Sports Department, Haryana.
On August 25, a signature drive will also be held and pledge would be administrated to all College students to ensure girls’ safety. The colleges have also been directed to ensure that the students who take the pledge, tie a Sankalp Sutra to a tree in the campus and the pictures of the same has to be uploaded on its web portal.
Apart from this, empowerment marches or rallies and special assembly on the issue of gender sensitization will be held on August 24 with the theme Sashakt Naari-Sashakt Haryana while Bindaas Bol- open forum on gender sensitization would be organized on August 23 in all government colleges of the state.
Notably, an online eve-teasing survey by the Haryana Police last year to assess the scale and nature of the problem of eve teasing had revealed that maximum number of eve-teasing incidents occur when females travel to and from educational institutions and offices.
A majority of 64.5 per cent respondents in the survey had said that eve-teasing takes place during commuting to and from schools, colleges and offices.
For the safety of girls and women in the state, the government had recently announced to implement its “state action plan on sexual and gender based violence” which proposes developing a module to teach reproductive health and sex education as part of compulsory school curriculum, increase posting of female teachers in schools, initiate a policy dialogue with Transport Department to address sexual harassment in all modes of transport, among other initiatives in a bid to ensure a violence free environment for women and children in the state.
Haryana, which is already known for skewed-sex ratio and rigid patriarchal order, has seen rise in cases of crime against women over the past few years.