Celebrities to Arun Jaitley: Make sanitary napkins tax-free

#LahuKaLagaan campaign is an initiative by SheSays NGO, urging the Finance Minister to exempt the tax completely. While the Delhi government has reduced the tax on sanitary pads to 5 percent from the earlier 12.5 percent in March, the tax on sanitary napkins is still a stellar 14 percent under the Goods and Services Tax system in other states.

Tax-free sanitary napkins are essential as most Indian women still don’t use sanitary napkins – 80% cannot afford them while 19% lack information, and 2% don’t have access to them.

Many celebrities are expressing their support to the campaign on different social media platforms and here is what they think about this issue.

This video is Satire – Please help spread this message – #LahuKaLagaan 1) Why do Indian women not use sanitary napkins? 80% cannot afford them 19% do not know about them 2% cannot use due to non-availability 2) Only 12% of 497 million Indian women use sanitary napkins. The other 88% still use old fabric, wood shavings, sand, dried leaves and plastic. 3) The average cost of a pack of 7 sanitary napkins is INR 54. One woman needs at least 16-20 pads a month with an average expense of INR 1944 per year. 4) 23% of girls drop out of school on menarche. If this moves you, you pls go to twitter and re-tweet this video from my page so Arun Jaitley gets the message. Thanks!!!❤️❤️❤️ #travelwithshenaz

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Mallika Dua

#LahuKaLagaan ☝Currently Sanitary napkins fall under Schedule C (5.5%) of the Maharashtra Value Added Tax Act. The Delhi Government has recently announced a reduction in tax from 12.5% to 5% on SN packs costing more than Rs.20. ☝Out of the 497 million women who constitute India’s population, only 12% of women use sanitary napkins. The remaining 88% of Indian women resort to hand crafted alternatives like: old fabric, rags, sand, ash, wood shavings, newspapers, dried leaves, hay and plastic. ☝Inadequate menstrual protection makes adolescent girls (age group 12-18 years) miss 5 days of school in a month (50 days a year). Around 23% of these girls actually drop out of school after they started menstruating. Tweet to Mr. Jaitly using #LahuKaLagan and let’s hope better sense prevails for there will (always ) be blood

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