In a serious indictment of the Samajwadi party government claiming to following the ideals of Ram manohar lohia for women empowerment, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) has slammed the state government for the gender bias in the state where the girls and women were deprived of basic amenities and crime against them has increased.
The CAG in its stand alone report on `empowerme3nt of women’ for the year ending on March 31 2015 said `` the state government failed to adopt the gender based budgeting even after 10 years of its declaration of the state women policy in 2006 and gender segregated data were nit being maintained by the programme implementing agencies of the state government.
“Number of girl’s not attending pre-school education activities have exponentially increased from 3 per cent in 20101-11 to 33 per cent in 2014-15. Besides the incidence of crime against women in the state has been rising consistently during last five years. There has been 61 per cent increase in incidence of crime against women between 20101-11 and 2014-15. There was substantial increase in cases of rape ( 43 per cent) and kidnapping and abduction of girls/ women ( 21 per cent) during 2013-14 as compared to previous year,” the CAG report said.
CAG said, “Shortage of about 55 per cent of police manpower in UP if not immediately bridged may further worsen the crime scenario in the state. Women police personnel constitute only 4.55 per cent of the total police force in the state against the ministry of home affairs advisory of 33 per cent’’.
The CAG was peeved over non utilisation of funds to the tune of Rs 15.03 crore sanctioned by central government in 2010-12 under ‘ Financial Assistance and support Services to Victims of Rape: A scheme for Restorative Justice’ by UP government to give compensation to the rape victims though there were 3,544 cases of rape during that period. It further said that the disparity in male and female wages in UP was as high as 73 per cent in rural areas and 31 per cent in urban areas even as the Constitution directs the state to prepare its policies toward providing adequate means of livelihood equally for men and women and ensure equal pay for equal work. However the constitutional audit body made 42 recommendations to the state government to improve gender equality and reduce discrimination against women, which have been accepted by the UP government. The CAG in its long report said that institutional deliveries was only 46 per cent of registered pregnant women in the state during 2010-15 thus indicating that majority of rural women had to depend on home deliveries by unskilled birth attendants.
Ultrasonography centres in test-checked centres did not maintain mandatory basic information or records.
There was shortage of government health centres in the state as only 773 CHCs, 3,538 PHCs and 20,521 sub-centres were functional as on March 2015 against the required number of 1,555 CHCs, 5,183 PHCs and 31,100 sub-centres respectively. The report said that the target fixed for family planning programme, female’s tubectomy was 20 times higher than the target fixed for males vasectomy while achievement for tubectomy was 41 times of the achievement for vasectomy in terms of absolute numbers.
During the examination, it was found that 22 to 32 per cent pregnant women, lactating mothers and children were deprived of the benefits of supplementary nutrition programme during 2010-15. Besides 42 per cent of children in the state were underweight and 15 per cent were suffering from wasting. The number of severely malnourished children increased more than five times from 0.28 lakh in 2010-11 to 1.46 lakh in 2014-15. The re3port further said for the nutrition programme adequate number of Anganwadi Centres (AWCs) as required under the scheme guidelines were not established in the state. Against the required number of over 2.85 lakh AWCs only 67 percent or little over 1.90 lakh were sanctioned and only 1.87 lakh or 66 percent were functional in the state.