Maternity benefit scheme not intended to be rolled out: Tulsi

The government today came under attack from a nominated member in the Rajya Sabha, who said a scheme to provide maternity benefits was only a "public relations exercise" and not intended to be rolled out.
Raising the issue during Zero Hour, senior advocate K T S Tulsi said the Ministry for Women and Child Development has imposed a pre-condition for the release of maternity benefit to only those women who have a maximum of two children.
Noting that the National Food Security Act does not lay down any condition for providing maternity benefit of Rs 6,000, he said "when the statute does not lay down any condition, I wonder how this condition was laid down merely by an executive order."

Because of this pre-condition, a study done by National Alliance for Maternal Health and Human Rights shows that about 60 per cent of women in the age group of 15-49 years would be excluded who are mostly dalits and tribals, he said.
Only 2.7 lakh women will benefit annually as against 51.71 lakh, he said, adding that the budgetary requirement for the scheme was about Rs 16,000 crore while the total allocation for the entire ministry was a mere Rs 17,408 crore.
"Looking at the allocation, only inference that can be drawn is that these schemes are launched only as public relation exercise with government never intending to implement them and provide benefits to anybody," Tulsi said.