As many as 130 couples tied the knot at a mass wedding ceremony in Narowal under the Punjab government’s Dhee Rani Programme, with each couple receiving Rs200,000 in financial assistance and wedding clothes for the bride and groom, 24NewsHD TV reported on Sunday.
The programme aims to help poor families meet wedding expenses and allow their daughters to begin married life with dignity and respect.
Federal Minister for Planning and Development Ahsan Iqbal, Parliamentary Secretary for Kashmir Affairs and Gilgit-Baltistan Chaudhry Anwarul Haq, Punjab Social Welfare Minister Sohail Shaukat Butt and other senior officials attended the ceremony.
Speaking at the event, Sohail Shaukat Butt said the programme had entered its third year and had helped thousands of deserving couples get married through mass wedding ceremonies.
He said the initiative was designed to reduce the financial burden on families who could not afford wedding expenses.
Ahsan Iqbal congratulated the newly married couples and stressed the importance of responsible family planning, quality education, and proper care of children.
He urged parents to focus on giving their children better opportunities and a safe and bright future.
The Narowal ceremony is part of the latest phase of the Dhee Rani Programme, under which mass weddings resumed on 12 November. The Punjab government launched the third phase of the programme on 14 November, announcing that it would arrange weddings for 5,000 more couples in the 2026-27 financial year, with the government covering all ceremony expenses.
Under the scheme, each bride receives Rs200,000 as a wedding gift through an ATM card. The programme is run by the Punjab Social Welfare and Bait-ul-Maal Department and is aimed at daughters from deserving, underprivileged and low-income families, with priority given to orphan girls, women with disabilities, daughters of people with disabilities and brides from families facing extreme economic hardship.
According to the department, about 8,000 deserving daughters were married under the programme during the 2024-25 and 2025-26 financial years. Applications for the current phase are received through the official portal and verified before eligible families are included.
Earlier ceremonies in the resumed phase included a mass wedding in Lahore addressed by Provincial Information Minister Azma Bukhari, where 150 couples, including 21 from minority communities, were married, according to Radio Pakistan.
For many families in Punjab, the cost of a daughter’s wedding means loans and years of saving, and the programme tries to take that pressure off by paying for the ceremony and giving the bride a cash gift to start married life.
