Bhopal: In a significant move, the Madhya Pradesh cabinet on Tuesday approved the proposal to increase the quota for women in government jobs by two percent to 35 percent.
The decision to increase the reservation for women in recruitments to all state government jobs from 33 percent to 35 percent was taken earlier.
But the state cabinet which met here under the chairmanship of chief minister Mohan Yadav on Monday gave its stamp of approval to the decision, deputy chief minister Rajendra Shukla said after the meeting.
“It is a major step towards empowerment of women in the state”, he said.
This is the second pro-women decision taken by the Mohan Yadav government since it assumed office in December 2023.
In August this year, the state government announced a new cash grant scheme for school girls to buy sanitary napkins.
Under the ‘Sanitation and Hygiene Scheme’, girls studying in classes seven to 12 in government school are given Rs 300 per year each to purchase sanitary napkins during menstrual period.
The scheme is expected to benefit around 20 lakh school girls in the state.
The state government has directly transferred a total of Rs 57.18 crore to beneficiaries around the state for the current year.
Several other states distribute sanitary pads to adolescent girls free of cost.
But Madhya Pradesh is the only state in the country to introduce the direct cash transfer-based scheme for this.
The scheme aims not only to promote menstrual hygiene among the adolescent girls but may also to resolve the school dropout issue among the girl students, besides improving their attendance in the schools during menstrual period.
In poor families, parents cannot afford to buy sanitary napkins for their adolescent daughters forcing the latter to use cloth pads.
In the previous Shivraj Singh Chouhan regime in Madhya Pradesh, several pro-women schemes such as Ladli Laxmi and Ladli Behna programmes were launched for empowerment of women.