The plan announced during the budget unveiled in July has not come into implementation as the Home Ministry and the Ministry for Local Development pass the buck to each other.
The confusion has made the government unable even to prepare guidelines for distributing the grants and send it to districts for executing the plan. With the delay in the implementation of the plan, the Ministry of Finance reeling with the cash-crunch too seems dilly-dallying to allocate the budget for the purpose.
The government in this year´s budget had announced a grant of Rs 100,000 for each inter-caste couple to encourage marriage between Dalits and non-Dalits and Rs 50,000 grant to each couple when a widow remarries. The couples were to receive such grant within 30 days of marriage registration at concerned district administration office.
The plan had also drawn protests from various quarters including from Single Women Group.
Officials at Home Ministry said the ministry is not supposed to implement the plan as the events of marriages are registered under the Ministry of Local Development. "We have come to learn that the Prime Minister´s Office is directly dealing with the implementation of the plan," said an official at the Home Ministry.
The Prime Minister´s Office however said the Ministry of Local Development is dealing with the implementation. "Local development ministry must have already sent distribution guidelines to districts by now as the ministry is responsible for the implementation of the plan," said PMO Spokesperson Sharada Prasad Trital.
Officials at the Ministry for Local Development said the Home Ministry is responsible for the implementation of the plan. "Though the responsibility of implementation was initially put on us later it was agreed that the Home Ministry will do the job," said Joint Secretary Dinesh Thapaliya, spokesperson at the Ministry of Local Development.
Thapaliya said that no such guidelines have been prepared and sent to the districts yet.
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