Widow marriage scheme has no takers in 24 districts of MP

BHOPAL: Not even a single widow got married in 24 of the 52 districts in Madhya Pradesh under the Kalyani Vivah Sahayta Yojanain, under which a financial aid of Rs 2 lakh is provided for someone marrying a widow.


In October, 2017, the department of social justice under the Shivraj Singh Chouhan-led BJP government had launched the scheme for rehabilitation of widows in state.

The first of its kind scheme in the country, it was aimed to benefit approximately a thousand women every year. Though it has been close to two years ever since the scheme was launched, only 200 women have benefited till date.

As a mandatory condition to avail the scheme, a woman should not be more than 45 years of age. Around 2.5 lakh widows in the state get pension from the government and officials believe half of them are believed to be of marriageable age.

The districts with no beneficiaries in the scheme are Agar Malwa, Alirajpur, Anuppur, Betul, Bhind, Chhatarpur, Damoh, Dhar, Gwalior , Harda, Hoshangabad, Katni, Khandwa, Narsinghpur, Neemuch, Rewa, Sagar, Sehore, Sheopur, Sidhi, Singrauli, Tikamgarh, Ujjain and Umaria.

The principal secretary of the social justice department, Ashok Kumar Shah, said that the scheme is gradually getting popularized and the number of beneficiaries would increase in the coming months.

Ashoknagar district tops the list where around 40 women benefited from the scheme so far.

In July 2017, the Supreme Court had asked the Centre to frame a policy to encourage widow remarriage. The MP government took inspiration from the apex court order and handed out a monetary incentive, perhaps the first since widow remarriage was legalized way back in 1856.

To ensure that the scheme is not misused, it has some conditions — the most important being that it should be the man’s first marriage. Secondly, the couple has to get the marriage registered in the district collectorate in order to get the money.

When the scheme was launched, officials believed it would be a boon in rural areas where widows are left to lead a miserable life. Many even suffer social boycott. However, officials failed to explain the upper age limit. “In our society, marriages happen between 18 and 45 years,” one official tried to explain.