What does CAG report tell about women empowerment in Uttar Pradesh?

The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) tabled the report on empowerment of women in Uttar Pradesh in the state assembly on Tuesday. The report of the last five years vindicates the National Commission for Women’s claims that the state has the highest number of criminal cases against women.

Here are some of the highlights of the report that mirror state’s apathy towards protecting women.  

Cases of crime

1. Cases of crime against women increased by 61 per cent between 2010-11 and 2014-15.
2. There was a 43 per cent increase in rape cases and 21 per cent increase in cases of kidnapping and abduction of girls (or women) in 2013-14 compared to the previous year. The 59 per cent of the rape survivors were minors.
3. The districts with highest number of rape cases in 2010-15: Aligarh (392), Moradabad (377), Allahabad (348), Meerut (346), Agra and Lucknow (328 each).

Policing

4. The Uttar Pradesh police are woefully short of manpower (55 per cent). The CAG warned that if the gap is not filled immediately, the situation in the state would worsen.
5. Women police personnel constitute only 4.6 per cent of the total police force in the state. This is far below the 2009 Home Ministry recommendation of 33 per cent.

Health care

6. Majority of the 54 per cent of rural women had to depend on home deliveries by unskilled birth attendants.
7. The district authorities did not conduct inspections of ultrasonography centres as prescribed. In 96 per cent cases, they did not issue inspection reports.
8. Mandatory provisions to run ultrasonography centres were breached in 58 per cent cases. However, no action was taken on the defaulting centres.
9. Only 6 per cent of community health centres in Uttar Pradesh had facilities to terminate a pregnancy medically.

Child health and nutrition

10. About 42 per cent of children in Uttar Pradesh are underweight
11. The number of severely malnourished children increased by more than five times from 28,000 in 2010-11 to 146,000 in 2014-15
12. Ration allocated under Rajiv Gandhi Scheme for Empowerment of Adolescent Girls did not reach 1. 35 million (28 per cent) adolescent girls from 2011-15

The seriousness of the issues came to the fore last week when media reports revealed how a village council in western Uttar Pradesh constituted its own ‘village security force’ to provide safety and security to its women. They were allegedly “fed up with the lack of prompt responses from the local police in crimes against women”. They decided not to trust the law enforcement agencies in curbing crimes against women.

On August 23, the Akhilesh Yadav government informed the Legislative Assembly that 1,012 rape cases and 4,520 cases of women harassment were reported in Uttar Pradesh from March 15 to August 18 this year. On July 29, a woman from Noida and her minor daughter were raped on national highway 91 in western UP.

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