Finance Minister P Chidambaram today allocated an additional ₹1,000 crore to the Nirbhaya Fund for the safety and empowerment of women.
“In order to make it clear that the (Nirbhaya) fund will be a prominent fund, I intend to declare the grant of ₹1,000 crore as non-lapsable and in order to support more proposals, I propose to contribute to the fund another ₹1,000 crore next year,” Chidambaram said while presenting the interim budget in Parliament.
In last year’s Budget, Chidambaram had announced the Nirbhaya Fund with a corpus of ₹1,000 crore as a tribute to the gangrape victim. Nirbhaya (fearless) was the pseudonym given to the victim.
“To ensure the dignity and safety of women, I promised the Nirbhaya Fund and allocated ₹1,000 crore to the fund,” Chidambaram said.
The Cabinet has already cleared two proposals that will receive support from the fund.
In January, the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs approved a ₹1,405-crore project to track and monitor public transport and provide alarm buttons for alerting authorities.
The project involves setting up closed-circuit television (CCTVs) and GPS in public transport vehicles.
The Government set a deadline of February 20, 2014, for public transport vehicles running in major cities with a population of over 10 lakh to install GPS devices.