The Ministry of Home Affairs(MHA) has sanctioned Rs 100 crore from the Nirbhaya Fund for setting up women help desks in police stations in all states and Union Territories (UT) across the country. The women help desks will be focused on making police stations more women friendly and approachable. Women police officers will be deployed at the help desks which would be the first and single point of contact for any woman walking into a police station.
Key Points:
i.The officials of women help desk would be trained to be sensitive towards women and these help desks would consist of enlisted panel of experts like lawyers, psychologists and NGOs (Non-Governmental Organisation) to facilitate legal aid, counselling, shelter, rehabilitation and training
ii.Nirbhaya fund:
- Nirbhaya Fund is a Rs. 10 billion corpus announced by the Government of India in its 2013 Union Budget by the then finance Minister Pallaniappan Chidambaram. This fund was created to support initiatives by the government and NGOs working towards protecting the dignity and ensuring the safety of women in India.
- As per the framework, the Ministry of Finance (MoF) through Department of Economic Affairs(DEA), is the nodal agency of the fund and MWCD (Ministry of Women and Child Development) is responsible to review and monitor the progress of sanctioned projects/ schemes in conjunction with the concerned Central Ministries/ Departments
- Recently in 2019, it was revealed that only less than 30% of Nirbhaya Fund has been utilised in the country based on the report after filing Right to Information Act(RTI), 2005 on the fund. The total amount of the fund is said to be around Rs 3,100 crore. But only Rs.825 crores has been utilized.
About Ministry of Home Affairs(MHA):
Founded- 15 August 1947.
Headquarters- New Delhi.
Union minister- Shri Amit Shah.
Minister of State(MoS)- G.Kishan Reddy and Nityanand Rai.
