VIJAYAWADA: “The objective behind making class 10 certificate mandatory in order to avail financial aid under YSR Kalyanamastu and YSR Shaadi Tohfa schemes is to encourage education,” said Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy while releasing financial aid of Rs 38.18 crore to 4,536 girls, who got married during October-December 2022 quarter.
Addressing to the beneficiaries virtually from his camp office of Friday, the Chief Minister said that his government strongly believed that education could help change the fate of the poor. Quoting an excerpt from the novel ‘A Thousand Splendid Suns’ authored by Afghan-American novelist Khaled Hosseini, he said, “Marriage can wait but education cannot as a society will not prosper if the women are not educated.”
“Making 18 and 21 years for the bride and the groom respectively as the minimum age eligibility is to prevent child marriage, school dropouts and improve enrolment in the State,” CM Jagan said.
On the occasion, he announced that the financial aid amount would be credited to the accounts of the mother of the bride from the next quarter onwards in order to encourage parents to educate their girls before performing their marriage in a dignified manner.
Jagan said that while the beneficiaries were left without any aid during the TDP regime, which had withdrawn the financial assistance scheme from 2018 after failing to pay Rs 68.68crore to 17,709 beneficiaries, the YSRCP Government was implementing the YSR Kalyanamasthu and YSR Shaadi Tohfa schemes with enhanced incentives and transparency.
“Unlike the TDP regime, a financial aid of Rs 1 lakh is being extended to Scheduled Castes (SCs) beneficiaries under Kalyanamastu scheme, Rs 1.2 lakh for inter-caste marriage involving a member from SC/ST community. For beneficiaries hailing from BCs, aid worth Rs 50,000 aid will be extended and for inter-caste marriage. An aid of Rs 1 lakh will be given to minorities. Beneficiaries with physical disabilities will get an aid of Rs 1.5 lakh. An assistance of Rs 40,000 will be extended to construction workers,” CM Jagan said.
The Chief Minister reiterated that he hoped that seeing the benefits of the scheme, parents would educate their girls till Class 10. “I hope more girls enrol themselves in degree colleges as the government is implementing plethora of schemes,” he said.