BJP government not keen to disburse Nirbhaya fund: AAP

Stepping up its attack against the Centre and the BJP over the security of women, Aam Aadmi Party on Tuesday alleged that the government was not keen to disburse money from Nirbhaya Fund.

Addressing a press conference in New Delhi, party leader Atishi Marlena said, a response to an RTI application by a volunteer in June this year has revealed that although money was allocated under the Nirbhaya Fund, constituted after gangrape of a 23-year old student, there was no disbursement or utilisation of money. "Nirbhaya Fund has been set up and an amount of Rs 1000 crore has been credited in a Public Account for the same. In the Interim Budget 2014-15, an additional Rs 1000 crore has been allocated for the Nirbhaya Fund. "The corpus has not been disbursed/ utilised so far because various schemes are yet to be finalised," the RTI reply said.

Party's Patiala MP Dharmavira Gandhi said he received a letter from the Women and Child Welfare Ministry stating that the government proposes to open 50 centres to help women in distress. Gandhi, who is also a parliamentary leader of the party, said he had got a land santioned for a centre for women in his constituency, but no money has been released. "I have now reliably learnt that the Prime Minister's Office so far has not endorsed the opening of these centres," the AAP MP claimed.

"This shows that the Centre is just giving a pep talk on security of women, but doing nothing on the ground," Marlena said. The party also slammed the Delhi administation over the issue of radio cabs and said the transport authority had been alerted about the "unregulated" radio cabs in August this year.