NEW DELHI: 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 here, 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.
Scribe-turned-activist Amit Bhargava has alleged that he had met Delhi's Transport Commissioner on August 4 and apprised the authorities about the anamolies in the functioning of the radio cab services. A letter regarding this has also been written to Lt Governor Najeeb Jung, he said.
"The radio cabs do not come under any specific law and there is a blatant violation. For instance, these cabs have an All India Permit, but the drivers have license for a private car.
"Supreme Court of India had directed that all cabs in Delhi would run on CNG. But many companies have been operating All India Tourist Permit Cab and All India Tourist Permit Luxury Cab vehicles running on Diesel/Petrol, in sheer contempt of Supreme Court orders," Bhargava said.
He said that some companies are not registered under Delhi Radio Taxi Scheme and Economy Radio Taxi Scheme and are operating without any such permit.
"These companies call themselves as Software providers and claim that they are not Cab Operators, and have thus circumvented Central Motor Vehicles Act, 1988, and all rules framed thereunder," Bhargava said.