Princess Siddhi Kumari, granddaughter of Maharaja Bikaner and member of the Legislative Council of Rajasthan, celebrated her 49th birthday on October 6 by inviting eleven young girls and their parents to her office. The princess decided to open a savings account for girls, as part of a program created by the Indian government in 2015.
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Deputy Princess Bikanier opens a booklet for young girls on the occasion of her birthday
Putri Siddhi Kumari is a member of the territorial legislature, elected since 2008 in the Rajasthan Legislative Assembly, as a representative for the Bikaner East constituency. Regional assemblies have exactly 200 elected members, each representing a constituency. The Princess is a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party.
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On the occasion of her 49th birthday, Princess Siddhi Kumari has gathered around her local elected officials and party members in her office. The MP decided to mark her birthday by opening savings accounts for eleven girls in her district. Siddhi Kumari has opened their respective accounts, as part of the Sukanya Samriddhi Account program. This program is part of the Beti Bachao government campaign, Beti Padhao. Sukanya Samriddhi’s account is a savings book that can be opened at any postal bank or affiliated bank and is intended for girls aged 0-10 years.
Sukanya Samriddhi’s account aims to give a different start to the lives of his future wives, in a country where many of them had no bank or savings accounts when they started their adult lives. . With this special booklet, they benefit from an extraordinary interest rate of 7.6% per annum. When it launched in 2015, the figure was 9.1%. Their parents must open it before their daughter turns 10 and they can continue to feed her until she is 15. The girls then had to wait until they were 21 to close it or withdraw the money. The only exception is closing at 18 on the occasion of a wedding. They can only use their savings (up to 50% of the account) to pay for their education costs.
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Princess Siddhi Kumari is the granddaughter of the last Maharaja of the Bikaner Kingdom, Karni Singh. Karni Singh ascended the Bikaner throne in 1950, following the death of his father. His father lived through the fall of the British Raj and the abolition of the monarchy when India gained independence. Karni Singh, however, became Maharaja and was recognized as such, until a 1971 constitutional amendment abolished the peerage and privileges of the previous ruling family. His son, father Putri Siddhi Kumari succeeded him as head of the former ruling family in 1988.
The State of Bikaner is a former sovereign kingdom founded in 1465. Bikaner existed as a sovereign state until 1948 when India was formed. During the British Raj period, the ruler of Bikaner was entitled to 17 cannon salutes, in accordance with the rules of protocol interest imposed by the British. This 60,000 km2 state had nearly one million inhabitants in 1930. When India was formed, Bikaner merged with the state of Rajasthan. The city of Bikaner currently has nearly 650,000 residents and is located not far from the Pakistan border, in northwestern India.
