Patna, Mar 24 (Reporter) Bihar government has allocated an estimated Rs 4865651.43 lakh for the gender budget in the financial year 2025-26 which is 24.65 percent more than the financial year 2024-25 when the size of the gender budget was Rs 3903364.23 lakh. Bihar Finance Minister Samrat Choudhary tabled the Gender Budget 2025-26 during the pre-lunch sitting in the state assembly on Monday. Choudhary later said in a release here that the gender budget in the year 2025-26 is 15.35 percent of the total budget of the state. Reiterating the government's commitment for promoting gender equality in social and economic policies for the empowerment of women, Choudhary said that the gender budgeting is a symbol of achieving this goal. It involves formulation, resourcing, allocation and continuous monitoring with gender sensitivity to the vulnerabilities faced by women throughout their life cycle. To bring women at the core of laws, policies and programmes, the State Government has adopted gender budgeting as a budget strategy since 2008-09, he added. Choudhary said that the state government is committed to meeting the needs of half of the state's population (about 48 percent), which is 498.21 lakh according to the 2011 census. He said that the centre and the state both adopted Goal 5 of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) which focuses on gender equality and women's empowerment. The gender budgeting concept evolved in Bihar over the last 16 years to bring women into the mainstream of society...////...