Nirbhaya Fund gets additional Rs 1,000 crore in budget

Finance Minister P Chidambaram on Monday allocated an additional Rs 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 Rs 1,000 crore as non-lapsable and in order to support more proposals, I propose to contribute to the fund another Rs 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 Rs 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 put Rs 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 Rs 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.