The Haryana government has rubbished media reports about the state’s girl child statistics being inflated. According to a report in The Times of India from May 13, an audit of the “Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao” programme in Haryana revealed that recent improvement in the sex ratio was a result of dubious numbers.

In some districts, statistics of the number of girls born had been inflated, and district-level staff were told to register births of girl children immediately while registration of boys was delayed, the report said. The Haryana government has called the article baseless and incorrect.

Rakesh Gupta, the additional principal secretary to the chief minister, said the media report had confused the sex ratio at birth for the first quarter of 2017 with the figures for the years 2015 or 2016.

In April 2017, Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar had announced that the sex ratio in the state had touched 950 girls for every 1,000 boys for the first time. Haryana’s sex ratio, according to the 2011 census, was 834. The state government had attributed the improvement to the “Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao” initiative launched in 2015 across India by the Narendra Modi government.

Here is a round-up of pieces published on Scroll.in that focus on the sex ratio in Haryana and across India:

  • Numbers can lie and that is why it is too early to celebrate Haryana’s improving child sex ratio: A closer look at Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar’s claim that sex ratio has crossed 900 shows that the improvement, if any, is not uniform.
  • From sting operations to secret informers – How Haryana is clamping on sex selective abortions: Haryana’s additional principal secretary talks about the state’s plan to improve its sex ratio at birth to an ambitious 950 females per 1,000 male live births.
  • Why Haryana CM’s claim that state’s sex ratio has improved is dangerous for women: By claiming that the declining sex ratio can be turned around by a high-profile campaign, Khattar is trivialising an important issue.
  • One step forward, two back – India’s uneven progress in correcting gender imbalance: The National Family Health Survey shows that sex ratio at birth has improved in a few states, but fallen drastically in others.
  • More male foetus abortions than female? Official data indicates vast under-reporting: As many as 238 foetuses and newborns were abandoned in South Delhi alone.