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Saturday, February 1, 2014

State grant for marriages with disabled persons

GANGTOK, 31 Jan: A married couple where one or both partners suffer from disability is now entitled to a grant from the state government. For this purpose the State Government, through the Social Justice Department, has framed regulations to encourage more people to accept disabled persons as their life partner.
Furthermore, the other objective is also to enable assimilation of handicapped persons into mainstream society. This is now possible under the Sikkim Grant of Award for Marriages with Disabled Persons Rules, 2013. The quantum of the grant will be notified by the state government.
In the context of applicability of this grant the state has defined disability to include visual and hearing impairment, locomotor disability, mental retardation and mental illness and also leprosy cured.
Disabled Married couple relates to a couple in which either one or both partners are disabled with minimum 40% disability. Further they would have to belong to the Below Poverty Line category. However should the beneficiary enter into re-marriage and in the event of death or divorce of the spouse, the award of grant would cease.
Applications for grant are required to be accompanied with marriage certificate, medical certificate and certificate issued by the Gram Vikash Adhikari stating that the couple have been married and living together for more than 2 years.
The department is required to put in place a selection committee headed by the Secretary for the purpose of beneficiary selection.  This committee is to scrutinize all the relevant documents. The Social Justice department is also the competent authority to sanction grant of award.
Further more it has been stipulated that each beneficiary is to submit a ‘Life Certificate’ in the prescribed format in the month of November each year failing which it will be presumed that the beneficiary is either dead or migrated outside Sikkim. In such an event the payment of the grant or pension shall be stopped.

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