Bangalore: The State Government will set up a gender budget cell in the Finance Department to study the allocation for women in budgets and suggest measures to increase them, Deputy Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa has said.

In a speech read in his absence by the Industries Minister Katta Subramanya Naidu at the inauguration of the southern region workshop on "Gender just budgeting" here on Friday, Mr. Yediyurappa, who holds the Finance portfolio, said that gender-based budgeting was important as it helped prioritise and orient public expenditure to reflect the concerns of women.

At a press conference later, Ranjana Kumari, president of WomenPowerConnect, said it was surprising that even though Karnataka was the first in the country to reserve 33 per cent of seats in for women in panchayati raj institutions, it did not have a single woman in the Cabinet.

In the Union budget, an analysis had shown that resource allocation for women-centric schemes had risen marginally from one per cent to 5.3 per cent, she said. This had led to inadequate allocation of resources in sectors such as education and health for women, she said.

After several petitions to the Centre, it had decided to allocate 30 per cent of each Ministry's funds to resolve problems that women faced in the line of work, coming under the purview of that Ministry. "But none of the Ministries could use the funds and said they had no gender issues," Ms. Kumari said.

National group

WomenPowerConnect is a national group of women's organisations that lobbies for legislative co-ordination. On Saturday, the first State chapter of the organisation will be inaugurated at the conference.

The Karnataka State Chapter will work towards sensitising women elected representatives to gender budgeting, said Madhura M. Chatrapathy, head of the Karnataka chapter.

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