The Andhra Pradesh government is planning to get at least five thousand orphan and poor Muslim girls married through a mass marriage program to be executed by the state Waqf Board. The state minority welfare minister, Mohammed Ali Shabbir, who convened a meeting of Muslim legislators, religious leaders and officials to discuss the idea, said that a representative committee has been constituted to frame the modalities and regulations for organizing this program. The state government has already allocated an amount of Rs5 crore in this year's budget for the mass marriages. “This program is patterned on what the Tirumala Tirupati Devsthanam (TTD) has been doing to help the girls of poor Hindu families,” Shabbir said. The TTD is organizing mass weddings of thousands of Hindus couples all over the state every year to help the families facing difficulties because of the increasing demands of dowry. “Similarly the state government has also been receiving representations for several years that thousands of Muslim girls of poor families are unable to get married because of the problem of dowry. Consequently our government has come up with this idea and we hope to help suffering families,” Shabbir said. The TTD at an average spend Rs5,000 on each such marriage providing two grams of gold for Mangal sutra, food for 60 persons and cloths. “We have discussed what should be included in a package to be given to a newly married couple under this program. We can spend up to Rs10,000 on each marriage giving cloths and other essential commodities,” the minister said. “This way we can hope to organize 5,000 marriages utilizing the budget amount of Rs50 million.” After the regulations are finalized by the committee, the government will distribute the money to all the districts in accordance with their Muslim population. In case of an eligible girl or her family not coming forward for the mass marriage, the government will also think of providing financial assistance for individual marriage, he said. The machinery of the state Waqf Board will be used for identifying and verifying the eligible poor and orphan girls. The state government plans to increase the budgetary allocation next year for this program depending upon the results of this year's experiment. At another meeting, the minister for minority welfare also discussed the proposal of providing subsidy to the Christians intending to visit occupied Jerusalem. The state government has allocated an amount of Rs2 million for the purpose. A committee of retired Christian IAS officers was constituted to prepare the guidelines and regulations to identify the beneficiaries and fix the amount of subsidy for each pilgrim. __
