‘Waste of money, manpower’: Rajasthan home dept wants MLAs questions on crime against women cancelled

Rajasthan’s home department has said questions of three BJP legislators and one Congress leader regarding crime against women and children in the state must be dismissed.

Seema Kumar, the deputy secretary in the home department, has written to the state assembly’s secretary and given the reason behind the request. Kumar has said that extraordinary manual labour and money will be wasted towards the replies to these questions.

She added the process will also entail the use of 963,000 sheets of paper. So, speaker CP Joshi should be apprised of the matter and urged that these questions must be rejected, the bureaucrat also said.

Congress MLA Indra Devi from Bamanwas has asked about the number of cases of rape of minors that have been registered since 2014.

Among the other questions that have perturbed the home department is one by Jagsiram, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s member of legislative assembly from Revdar. Jagsiram sought information about the incidents of murders of women after being raped and gangraped in the state between January to June 10, 2019. He also wanted to know how many police officials were caught taking bribes.

BJP legislator from Ramganjmandi Madan Dilawar sought details about the cases of kidnapping of newly-wed brides, kidnapping and rape of girls younger than 17 years and incidents of rape of mentally-disabled women and girls.

Dharmendra Kumar, another BJP MLA, has sought details about the cases registered under Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012, since 2014. He also wants to how many chargesheets have been filed in a court and information on the investigation pending in such cases.

The opposition legislators accused the Congress-led government of suppressing data on the rising crime graph in the state.

“The Congress government is not releasing the information because it will unmask the truth that crime against women has increased drastically under its regime,” Madan Dilawar said.

The BJP leader said he will write to the speaker if wastage of paper is a concern, the government can give the reply to their questions on a pen drive or CD.

“The government has not made any serious effort to tackle crime against women and children in the state. Why don’t they give us the fact and let us be clear in front of the people?” Kumar asked.

First Published: Aug 19, 2019 15:21 IST