Wedding dreams of 8 girls shattered as ‘quota’ saturates in Sonbhadra district

Varanasi: Dream of eight girls of Sonbhadra, to begin their married life after a mass marriage ceremony on Mar 23, were shattered as quota of 75 girls from Robertsganj block area got saturated.After knowing that names of their daughters were not in list of beneficiaries selected, the families—who had completed rituals of ‘haldi' and ‘mehendi' at home before reaching District Institute of Education and Training (DIET) campus, Usraura, on Monday to take part in Mukhyamantri Samuhik Vivah Yojana—staged a massive protest at district headquarters on Tuesday. District officials had a hard time convincing family members to call off their stir by assuring that their marriage could be solemnised in next rounds of MSVY. Sonbhadra district social welfare officer Gyanendra Singh Bhadoria said on Wednesday, "Families of the girls were informed that their application was not rejected. There is a procedure for selection in list of beneficiaries with data forwarded to the directorate only after eligibility verification is completed by block development officer . It requires video logging, biometric and facial verification, after which code is generated and allotted to the applicant." When senior officials sought reasons for non-completion of the procedure in the case of these eight girls, it came to light that the number of applicants from their tehsil was already above 200 and 70 of them, other than these eight, were issued the code to get benefits of the scheme.At present, 2,372 applications are under process, said Bhadoria, mentioning all eligible applicants, who could not be covered in previously held rounds of mass marriages, will be included in next round. With next budget release, he said, mass marriage ceremony is likely to be on Apr 20. The aggrieved bride and groom parties claimed that after everything was found satisfactory in the eligibility check and verification, they were asked to come on time at the mass marriage ceremony on Mar 23.Given the assurance, they held ceremonies like haldi-mehndi while their relatives had also started gathering while some of them had also distributed invitations. Fathers of girls, including Rameshwar Prasad and Vinod of Markundi area, said that their preparations were based on instruction of the block officials, who came for verification and told them the daughter's marriage would take place on Mar 23 at the DIET campus.