Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday at a programme here transferred Rs 1,000 crore to bank accounts of self help groups to benefit around 16 lakh women.
Taking a swipe at his rivals, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday said the government is trying to raise the marriage age of women to 21 so that they can have time to study and progress, but this has upset some. Addressing a rally here in Uttar Pradesh, where assembly elections are due early next year, he also said 25 lakh of the 30 lakh houses given under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana are registered in the name of women in the state. This shows the government’s commitment to “sacha (true) empowerment of women”, Modi said. “We are trying to increase the age of marriage of women to 21 years so that they can have time to study and progress. The country is taking this decision for its daughters. Everyone is seeing who is having problems with this,” he said. In an apparent dig at the SP’s rule in the state, Modi said, “Five years ago the mafia ruled the roost on the roads of Uttar Pradesh, and the worst sufferers were our sisters and daughters”. Schemes like the Mukhyamantri Kanya Sumangala Yojana are becoming a great medium of trust for the rural poor and girls, Modi said after transferring crores of rupees to accounts of over one lakh girls in the state. The prime minister transferred Rs 1,000 crore to bank accounts of self-help groups (SHGs) to benefit around 16 lakh women. Under the Mudra Scheme, 70 percent of beneficiaries are women, he said, and termed SHGs as “rashtra sahayata samooh” and women there as “champions” of ‘atmanirbhar bharat’. He released over Rs 20 crore to over 1 lakh beneficiaries of the ‘Mukhya Mantri Kanya Sumangala Scheme’, which provides conditional cash transfer to a girl child at different stages of her life and also laid the foundation stone of 202 supplementary nutrition manufacturing units in 43 districts.
