On the occasion of International Women’s Day, the Haryana government has announced to start an award of Rs 5 Lakh in the name of former Cabinet Minister Late Sushma Swaraj who is a women icon across the country, during the ongoing budget session. Coming up with the new declaration of the award, Manohar LAL, the Chief Minister of the state said that she is the daughter of Haryana and is widely known as a women icon. Besides this, a string of other announcements was made in a direction to women empowerment. In this series, the Chief Minister gave many significant gifts to women, as well as announced to start an award of Rs. 5 lakhs in the name of Late Sushma Swaraj.
During the budget session, it was declared that three new women’s colleges at Kudal and Chhapar in Bhiwani district and Gannaur in Sonipat district. Self Help Groups have been a very important step towards women empowerment so far and in wake of this, the state has set a target of setting up 10,000 Self Help Groups during the year 2022-23. Apart from this, families of women whose annual income is Rs 1.80 lakh or less will be given assistance from the central and state government. This will benefit about 50,000 women families of the state and increase their income.
Prior to this, in a bid to increase the participation of women in Panchayati Raj Institutions to 50 percent seats instead of 33 percent seats reserved for women. In addition, to attract women towards entrepreneurship, a new scheme, Haryana Mukhyamantri Udyami Yojana, has been announced. For this, assuming the annual income of the woman and her family members is less than Rs. 5 lakh on the basis of the data of the Parivar Pehchan Patra, financial assistance of up to Rs. 3 lakh will be given to the self-help group in the form of a loan.
Under this scheme, the Haryana Women Development Corporation will give a rebate of up to 7 percent in interest for three years. In his budget speech, the information pertaining to the first female Haryana Vidhan Sabha Speaker, Shanno Devi, and the first woman Deputy Speaker, Lekhvati Jain was also divulged. Similarly, it was announced to provide affordable housing facilities to working women and for this, working women hostels would be set up in Panchkula, Gurugram and Faridabad. Apart from this, it was also announced to explore the possibilities of setting up three women’s ashrams through ‘Sahbhagita’ during the year 2022-23. Women’s education is one of the top priorities of the state and in this episode, the process of opening a women’s college within a radius of 20 km is already going on.