Ministry of Women & Child Development (WCD) on Saturday made a case for minimum compulsory allocation of fund in the range of 25 to 40% under various schemes and programmes to address gender concerns. In the 15th Finance Commission's Vertical Devolution, the Ministry has requested for prioritising gender concerns within schemes/ programmes - with a minimum compulsory allocation of 25 to 40%, as per a statement issued by the Finance Commission.

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Ministry's proposals

The 15th Finance Commission - headed by N K Singh - held a meeting on Saturday with the Union Minister for Women & Child Development Smriti Z Irani and her team of senior officials from the ministry. The ministry's proposals for enhanced allocations for its important schemes covering Anganwadi Services, Poshan, Women Welfare, Women Safety, Women Empowerment were discussed in details, the statement said.

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In its recommendations, the WCD Ministry has requested the Commission to include gender budgeting in its fiscal devolution formula.The Commission has been requested to incorporate gender criteria (Child Sex Ratio and Female Labour Force Participation) as a criteria for horizontal devolution of funds between states, it added. 

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It has also been asked to provide for basic and performance grants under which additional activities could be added to current activities of Local Bodies for promoting gender equality, it said. The Ministry also called for incentivising performance and asked that states with better performance in women education/health outcomes/LFPR/nutritional outcomes may be considered for incentive grants.

Finance Commission to frame report

WCD Ministry has also asked for gap funding for states to reach normative levels of social sector spending. The Commission has noted all the issues raised by the Ministry and has assured that they would look into all of them carefully while framing its report to the Union Government, the statement said. 

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