In a letter to the Chief Ministers he expressed serious concern over the declining sex ratio and asked them to provide personal leadership for addressing this serious challenge.
The Prime Minister laid emphasis on spreading awareness on the issue by involving civil society, including religious and community leaders, besides political representatives as part of policy and programmatic action to end discrimination against females.
Asserting that discrimination and social prejudice against women needed to be tackled at all stages, he said there is an ungent need for strong action against pre-birth sex selection using modern diagnostic technologies.
Noting that implementation of law on pre-natal sex determination continues to be a challenge in most areas, he said the need of the hour is to strengthen monitoring and inspection mechanisms for strict and effective implementation of the law by states and UTs.
The Prime Minister said that child sex ratio, measured as the number of girls between the ages of 0 and 6 years to 1000 boys in the same age group, has declined from 927 to 914 in 2011 as per the provisional census 2011 data. He pointed out that the disaggregated data for states and UTs reveal a picture that is even more alarming than the average child sex ratio for the country.