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Apex court stops ‘humiliating’ bounty
KATHMANDU, JAN 19 -
The Supreme Court has issued an interim order staying the government decision to grant Rs. 50,000 to persons agreeing to marry a widow. The court reached this decision after concluding that such an offer would make single women more dependent than independent.
Issued by a joint bench of justices Balaram KC and Girish Chandra Lal on Tuesday, the order, in effect, will put the government ‘special bonus programme’ “on status quo until a final verdict is issued”.
Despite an apex court show cause in December last year and vehement protests from single women across the nation, the government had made no changes to its programme. A separate regulation to the effect was finalised in December and the programme was on verge of entering its implementation phase.
Following the announcement of the offer at the annual budget speech last July, single women - an euphemistic phrase for widows - represented by Women for Human Rights (WHR) staged a series of protests demanding that the government scrap the programme and bring in a new one instead. The women registered a litigation demanding that the government scrap the programme five months ago.
“The offer was a typical expression of the patriarchal hierarchy prevalent in Nepali society,” said WHR chairperson, Lily Thapa. “The stay order should serve as a good lesson to the government,” Thapa added.
Referring to the Rs. 50,000 offer, the apex court order concluded that persuasion, threats, and false incentives had no place in the institution of marriage. The court maintains that since the bounty amount is not a form of social security, it would only serve to make single women more dependent and promote a system of “state sponsored dowry”.
Similarly, according to single women, the bounty offer acts on the assumption that women are safe and protected only when they are with their husbands. “It is wrong to spread the message that marriage is the only means of empowerment. There are other ways to empower single women,” said Thapa.
As an alternative to the bounty package, WHR had proposed other possibilities to the government. These included a request to remove the age threshold for widows receiving the monthly government allowance of Rs. 500. The proposal was rejected by the government, which then led to the litigation.
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