Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram on Monday allocated an additional Rs 1,000-crore to the Nirbhaya Fund for the safety and empowerment of women.“In order to make it clear that the (Nirbhaya) fund will be a prominent fund, I intend to declare the grant of Rs 1,000 crore as non-lapsable and in order to support more proposals, I propose to contribute to the fund another Rs 1,000 crore next year,” Chidambaram said.
In last year’s Budget, Chidambaram had announced the Nirbhaya Fund with a corpus of Rs 1,000 crore as a tribute to the gangrape victim. Nirbhaya (fearless) was the pseudonym given to the victim. The funds were allocated to various ministries to enhance safety for women in public spaces.
In mid- December last year, the finance ministry had given its in-principle approval to ministries of home and information technology, roads transport and highways (MoRTH) and railways to use Nirbhaya funds to work on measures to enhance safety and security of women. Ministry of Home had proposed to integrate police administration with the mobile phone network to trace and respond to distress calls with minimum response time.