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Focus on making U.P. safer for women
Social security, financial stability and empowerment of women have been top on Yogi government 2.0 agenda
Lucknow: In what may be called Yogi 2.0 government’s most significant step towards safety of women in the first six months of its tenure, the government on Friday passed the Code of Criminal Procedure (Uttar Pradesh Amendment) Bill, 2022 to end the provision of anticipatory bail in cases of heinous crime against women and children. The bill was tabled in the UP Vidhan Sabha on Thursday, a historic day as the UP legislature dedicated it to women legislators and women’s issues.
With the amendment, the accused will not get anticipatory bail in cases of rape, cases under Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act and a few more offences.
Parliamentary affairs minister Suresh Khanna said that the amendment had been brought in pursuance of a zero-tolerance policy toward crimes against women and children and to ensure prompt collection of biological evidence in sexual offences, to prevent such biological evidence from being annihilated, to minimize the possibility of destruction of relevant evidence and to restrain the accused from causing fear or coercion to the victims/ witnesses.
Crime against women and women’s empowerment had been major issues on which successive governments and the opposition locked horns in the state.
The opposition, including the principal opposition party, the Samajwadi Party, had been fiercely attacking the BJP government in the state over crime against women.
On the contrary, the BJP government, often citing NCRB (national crime record bureau) data, had constantly been saying that crimes against women were decreasing and in cases that did happen, the government ensured swift police action and then fast tracked them in courts.
So, when last fortnight, the opposition pounced on the government over the rape and murder of two Dalit sisters in Lakhimpur Kheri, deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya asked it not to engage in politics over the incident as the government had cracked the case within 24 hours. Then the chief minister’s office said that now the case would be tried in the fast-track court and pursued strongly to get the accused stringent punishment.
On the eve of completion of the first six months, a UP government spokesperson said the government was committed to empowering its ‘aadhi abaadi (half of the population--that is women)’ by providing social security, financial stability and ensuring their independence.
The government had been working towards women’s physical security, training of women’s battalion in the armed constabulary, self-defence courses in senior and senior secondary schools, building on economic empowerment through ODOP, creating meaningful spaces in political decision making and acknowledging women officers in bureaucracy, he said.
To create a safe atmosphere for women, the Yogi government was establishing three women’s PAC battalions for the first time in the state. At the same time, women help desks were set up at all 1584 police stations (including GRP) of the state. In all, 1535 police stations and 10,417 women police beats had been formed where 20,740 women police beat officers had been appointed, he said.
Additionally, all these police stations are equipped with Shakti Mobile for redressal of crime against women.
The spokesperson, citing NCRB data, said that crimes against women and children in UP had gone down considerably as a result of the Yogi government’s efficient prosecution.
