Though the child sex ratio is declining at an alarming rate across the nation, the successive governments have failed to take concrete steps to improve the child sex ration in the tribal pockets of Nalgonda district.
This has led to the abandonment of 275 children which included 250 girls at Nalgonda and Deverakonda Sishugruhas in the past one decade.
Sources working with Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) told , that the State government had set up a cradle at Sishugruha in Nalgonda in 2005 as a number incidents of sale of girl child were reported in early 2000s.
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By 2010 as many as 133 children were dropped in the Nalgonda cradle. Since most of them were from Deverakonda revenue division, a tribal populated area , the State government had set up another Sishugruha here where as many as 124 children that included 121 girls were abandoned by their parents so far.
Sishugruha in-charge, Nagul Meera, said that more than 90 per cent of the abandoned girls were from tribal families since the tribal people from this area goes for third, fourth , fifth and even for sixth delivery for want of a baby boy.
Ms. Meera said among the 250 girl children as many as 105 that included 97 girls were given for adoption, 74 were sent to Sishuvihar in Hyderabad. The remaining 55 were sent to Niloufer Hospital and five kids died to sickness. Fourteen children were returned to parents as they were ready to take them back after proper counselling.
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And the rest were admitted to some homes being run by NGOs since they are mentally retarded. Currently, both the Sishugruhas are having eight inmates in each.
According to Census-2011, there were only 921 girl children for every 1000 boys which is much lesser than undivided Andhra Pradesh’s average of 943.
Child rights activist, K.Subhash urged the Chief Minister K.Chandrasekhar Rao to design a concrete programme to stop this practice. “Poverty, lack of awareness were the two main reasons behind all these which need to be sorted out, he suggested.