E-Paper
6 years after Dec 16 gangrape, Nirbhaya fund disbursal still a work in progress
The Nirbhaya fund was announced by the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government in 2013 in the aftermath of the gruesome gang rape and murder of a physiotherapy student in New Delhi on December 16, 2012.
Key projects funded by the Nirbhaya Fund set up to finance initiatives which enhance the safety of women remain works-in-progress five years after the creation of the corpus, largely because of the time-consuming process involved and the subsequent implementation by various state governments, a government official said.
Still, there are 26 projects that have so far been approved and partially funded according to a spokesperson for the ministry of women and child development, which oversees the fund.
The fund was announced by the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government in 2013 in the aftermath of the gruesome gang rape and murder of a physiotherapy student in New Delhi on December 16, 2012.
It was set up with an initial corpus of ₹1,000 crore in 2013-14. Additionally ₹1,000 crore was also provided in 2014-15 and ₹550 crore each in 2016-17 and 2017-18. The corpus transferred to the public account for the fund up to 2017-18 stood at Rs. 3100 crore.
The fund is a non lapsable amount which is parked with the department of economic affairs under the ministry of finance. Currently, the corpus amounts to Rs. 3600 crore till 2018-19.
“Under this fund, 26 projects pertaining to different ministries/ departments of Government of India including the ministry of women and child development (WCD) have been appraised and recommended for funding till date. In total, the amount appraised for these schemes/ projects is Rs. 6738.91 crore against which an amount of Rs. 1513.40 crore has been released,” a spokesperson for WCD ministry said.
These 26 appraised schemes and projects include 11 proposals from the home ministry, eight from the WCD ministry, three from the ministry of road transport and highways, two from ministry of railways, and one each from the ministry of electronics & information technology and IIT Delhi, and the department of justice.
The WCD ministry is the nodal authority for appraising and recommending the proposals to be financed under Nirbhaya Fund. This is done by an Empowered Committee(EC) of officers chaired by Secretary, WCD.
“The projects also need to fit into the Nirbhaya guidelines of the fund to get appraisal. We do need to exercise required rules and procedures in any government procurement process. The prescribed process by the empowered committee has to be followed which can be time consuming. After these approvals there is a process of issuing tenders and various administrative structures come into play. It takes time for state administrations to implement them on ground,” a senior official at the WCD ministry said, asking not to be identifiedd.
The Nirbhaya guidelines state that: XXXXXXX
“There are various parameters that have to be examined and followed before giving approval for any project. The empowered committee chaired by the secretary decide and appraise the cost for the projects and give their nod followed by which the concerned ministries have to get financial approvals from respective finance committees. After this, they are given the amount from the department of economic affairs, which is about ₹1,500 crore,” the official added.
It isn’t clear why some projects that have been approved, such as a proposal for setting up of a national level coordination agency to called ‘Organised Crime Investigation Agency (OCIA)’ with the objective to investigate, collect intelligence of the cases of human trafficking and other organized crimes, proposal for implementing a ‘Safe City Project’ in Odisha and proposal for procurement of forensic kits for sexual assault cases (all three under the home ministry) have received no funding so far. Nor have the two projects under the fund proposed by the Indian Railways including the formation of Integrated Emergency Response Management System (IERMS) and provision of video surveillance system at Konkan Railway Station.
IERMS with a proposed cost of Rs.500 crore was approved to provide round the clock security to women passengers in 983 railway stations by strengthening of security control rooms in the stations along with providing a security helpline, medical facilities, and installation of CCTV cameras.
