Karnataka Brahmin marriage schemes (Representational Image)
Karnataka State Brahmin Development Board to launch two marriage schemes for the welfare of poor Brahmin families, who are facing difficulty in getting marriage alliances due to their economical background. The board will introduce schemes – Arundhati and Maitreyi, on a pilot basis offering financial bonds to those who will marry poor priests and poor brahmin brides.
The board has recently received approval from the authorities to launch the scheme and it has set aside funds to offer people coming forward for taking part in the scheme.
Board chairman H S Sachidananda Murthy, who is also a BJP leader, said, "We are in the process of chalking out the procedures to avail these funds. This is part of our efforts to assist weaker sections of the community.”
Under the Maitreyi scheme, financial bonds of Rs 3 lakh will be offered to 25 Brahmin women who marry priests from the economically weak background. While under the Arundhati scheme, Rs 25,000 each will be offered for the marriage of 550 women from economically weak families from the community.
Board chairman Murthy informed that the Maitreyi scheme will require the couples to stay married for three years to avail the entire bond of Rs 3 lakh. Installments of Rs 1 lakh will be paid at the end of each year of the marriage.
Around 3 percent of the six crore population in Karnataka belongs to the Brahmin community. The scheme covers only brahmin priests and brides who belong to economically weak families.
Initially, the board had planned to cover BPL Brahmin farmers or cooks or priests Maitreyi scheme but later they found that priests were economically very weak. Later, it decided to start the scheme with priests first.
The Arundhati and Maitreyi financial aid schemes for marriages are among the social schemes that the Brahmin Development Board has come up with for utilisation of Rs 25 crore of budget funds allocated to it when it was announced by the then State Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy in 2018-19. The board was created when the BJP government headed by BS Yediyurappa came to power in 2019. Murthy was appointed as its first chairman of the board.
