Patna, March 17: The state government today said in the Legislative Council that Bihar has recorded 69 per cent of total child marriages in the country.
Replying to a query of the BJP’s Kiran Ghai Sinha on the appointment of protection officers in every block of the district to stop child marriages, social welfare minister Parveen Amanullah told the said percentage of child marriages according to National Family Health Survey has put Bihar on the top of the chart.
So far as appointment of protection officers is concerned, Amanullah said according to the provision of Section 16(1) of Child Marriage Protection Act 2006, sub-divisional officers (SDOs) have been designated as child marriage protection officers at the sub-divisional level, whereas block development officers (BDOs) would assist them. Any person can inform the SDO, BDO, police station, gram panchayat or sarpanch concerned either in writing or verbally or through electronic medium on possible child marriages, said the minister before adding that the government has initiated several programmes such as workshops and seminars to create awareness among the common man about the ill-effects of child marriage.
Not satisfied with the reply, Sinha said the designated officer already had plenty of work, so he/she could not do justice to his additional responsibility of protection officer and hence, a full-fledged protection officer dedicated only to this job be appointed as soon as possible.
In response to another question raised by BJP’s Narendra Prasad Singh through call attention motion for implementation of revised payscales and 65 years of retirement age for engineering college teachers, science and technology minister Gautam Singh said the cabinet has already cleared the revised payscales of teachers of engineering and polytechnic colleges according to the recommendations of the All India Council for Technical Education but notification was yet to be issued.
Regarding enhancing retirement age to 65 years for teachers of technical colleges, Singh said the government would raise their retirement age considering what the government decides with regard to the university teachers. While replying to a question by RJD’s Tanveer Hasan, the in-charge minister Vijay Kumar Choudhary said jails in the state were not crowded with life convicts as their number was less than half of the total number of all types of convicts, which stood as 6,028 against the total number of prisoners of 36,522 as on June 30, last year.
Appointment review
Speaker Uday Narayan Chaudhary directed health minister Ashwini Kumar Choubey to let chief minister Nitish Kumar look into files related to appointments made in Indira Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences, Patna from 2009.
The ruling followed a heated discussion between Choubey and Leader of the Opposition Abdul Bari Siddiqui.
Siddiqui alleged that appointments in the institution had taken in violation of quota rules.
Denying the charges, Choubey said the appointments had been made on single posts where the quota rules did not apply.
