New Delhi, April 27
The government’s campaign against female foeticide is all set to get a major boost, with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh stepping forward to spearhead it. Come tomorrow, and the PM will lead from the front the government’s “Save the Girl Child Programme” by chairing a national-level meeting on the critical subject of “missing daughters”.

To be held in the capital, the meeting will be attended among others by women and child development minister Renuka Choudhury, health minister Ambumani Ramdoss whose department is coordinating the event, law minister H.R. Bhardwaj and the Chief Justice of India. The primary purpose of the assembly is the to review the ground situation with respect to sex ratio, especially child sex ratio in the country so that effective steps for improvement can be taken before the next census is conducted.

Health ministers of all the states will attend the meet and present their respective report cards; besides sharing with the government strategies they are adopting to combat the alarmingly declining sex ratio.

Under special scanner will be the seven focus states that have a specifically poor sex ratio record in the country. These include Punjab, Haryana, Chandigarh, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Delhi and Rajasthan. Discussions are also likely on enhancement in the scope of the PC and PNDT Act, more power to the inspection and monitoring committees and special measures for monitoring of district-level clinics.

Sources in the WCD ministry, which will be an equal partner in the programme, said the meeting will also look at the possibilities of gathering concrete evidence against the violators of PC and PNDT Act, which prohibit ultrasonography except in the case of six listed genetic disorders.

Medical audit of clinics is one of the many concrete suggestions received for the purpose; it is evidence admissible under law, say law experts, who will attend tomorrow’s meet. They add that medical audit of clinics is being considered for the purpose of institutionalisation to add more teeth to the PC/PNDT Act.

Besides, the government will also take stock of how the 126 MPs (of both the Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha) of focus states spent Rs 5 lakh each they were earlier given to spread awareness about the provisions of laws that ban sex determination.

A special part of the event will be the likely launch of a dynamic website on PNDT by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The website has been developed to solve the existing problem of improper processing of clinic records due to lack of proper monitoring mechanisms in the states.

“Now every clinic will have a user ID and will file their status report on to the web-based application which will have three levels of command - central, state and district,” said sources in the ministry of WCD.