HARIPUR, Jan 20: An amount of Rs 2.4 millions from the budget 2002-03 of the tehsil municipal administration has been placed on the discretion of women councillors.

A decision to this effect was endorsed at a joint meeting of finance and works committees of the council here on Monday. Finance Committee Chairman Ghulam Jan presided over the meeting.

Endorsing the decision earlier taken by the council session in its last sitting, the committees members agreed to allocate the funds for the development schemes forwarded by the woman councillors.

Earlier they were denied funds from the new budget.

Each woman member, the committees decided, could spend up to Rs200,000. But the bodies did not recommend schemes of the areas where the funds had been spent during the last fiscal year.

The committees also approved Rs400,000 for the two man councillors who were elected on special seats and Rs100,000 for a minority member of the tehsil council.

In the 54 member-House all the 12 women councillors of the tehsil municipal council, since the presentation of new budget in June last year, had been boycotting the decisions and voting process of the House in protest against a unanimous decision of their male counterparts for not allotting funds to the women councillors.