Uttarakhand Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat has ordered an inquiry into a press release by district social welfare officer of Tehri Garhwal that appears to promote a government scheme incentivising inter-caste and interfaith marriages, Hindustan Times reported.
CM Rawat reportedly ordered the probe on the evening of Saturday, 21 November, to find out the circumstances that led to the press release by the social welfare officer.
News agency PTI had on Saturday quoted officials saying the Uttarakhand government is paying Rs 50,000 to inter-caste and inter-faith couples to encourage such alliances.
The cash incentives are given to all legally registered inter-faith Indian couples, Economic Times reported, citing officials of the state Social Welfare Department.
The press release by the social welfare officer reportedly said, “To promote communal harmony and social unity, interfaith and inter-caste marriages are very important as it will help remove differences among different communities.”
Tehri's Social Welfare Officer Dipankar Ghildiyal reportedly said that eligible couples can apply for the incentive till up to one year after marriage, the report added.
Rawat’s media coordinator Darshan Singh Rawat told Hindustan Times, “The CM has taken a serious note of the incident and ordered an inquiry by the CS.”
“He has asked him to probe the conditions under which the district social welfare officer issued the press release on a government scheme when the government is strictly against any interfaith marriage with religious conversion,” Darshan reportedly said.
Although Darshan said that the scheme has been in place since the formation of Uttarakhand in 2000, CM Rawat has said that the government will work on discontinuing the scheme “as it cannot tolerate disturbance in peace and harmony in the state with marriages done after religious conversion.”
(With inputs from Hindustan Times, PTI and Economic Times.)
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