Ladki Bahin Yojana: 92 lakh names deleted, but how much money recovered remains a moot question

Mumbai: Maharashtra’s flagship Mukhyamantri Majhi Ladki Bahin Yojana has undergone a major overhaul following a statewide beneficiary verification and e-KYC exercise, with the number of women receiving benefits falling to around 1.65 crore from nearly 2.47 crore.

The sharp reduction has helped the government weed out a large number of beneficiaries who did not meet the scheme’s eligibility conditions. However, a crucial question now remains unanswered: How much of the money already paid to ineligible beneficiaries has actually been recovered?

Information secured through the Right to Information (RTI) Act by Mumbai-based activist Jitendra Ghadge shows that around 92.10 lakh beneficiary records were deleted during the verification process.

The largest group, nearly 62 lakh women, was removed for failing to complete the mandatory e-KYC process. Another 16 lakh beneficiaries were found to belong to families whose annual income exceeded the scheme’s eligibility limit of Rs 2.5 lakh. The verification also detected around 4.42 lakh beneficiaries who declared that they or a family member was a government employee. Around 3.6 lakh were already receiving benefits under the Sanjay Gandhi Niradhar scheme, while nearly 2.5 lakh cases involved families having more than two beneficiaries.

The exercise further identified beneficiaries who exceeded the prescribed age limit, cases flagged during district-level scrutiny and nearly 8,000 government employees who had received benefits despite being ineligible.

However, the deletion of a beneficiary from the database does not automatically establish that the person had fraudulently claimed the benefit. In particular, women who failed to complete e-KYC cannot necessarily be classified as ineligible or fraudulent beneficiaries. Likewise, removal from the database does not by itself establish that all payments previously received were irregular.

The more serious concern relates to beneficiaries who were clearly covered by exclusion criteria but nevertheless received government assistance, particularly government employees and those falling under other expressly prohibited categories.

According to Ghadge, the RTI reply did not provide district-wise details of the amounts recovered from government employees found to have received benefits illegally. This has raised questions about how effectively the recovery process is being implemented.

The government has maintained that recovery proceedings have been initiated against government employees and other ineligible recipients. District collectors have reportedly been directed to recover the amounts through the prescribed revenue recovery mechanism. Women and Child Development Minister Aditi Tatkare has also stated that recovered amounts are being deposited into the state treasury.

The key issue, therefore, is the gap between recovery proceedings initiated and money actually recovered. Merely identifying and removing ineligible beneficiaries does not provide a complete picture of the financial impact of the verification exercise.

With around 1.65 crore women currently receiving the monthly assistance, the Rs 1,500 payment translates into an expenditure of approximately Rs 2,475 crore every month, or nearly Rs 29,700 crore annually. Government statements have placed the current beneficiary count slightly higher at between 1.67 crore and 1.70 crore.

The verification exercise has clearly altered the scale of the Ladki Bahin scheme. But for one of Maharashtra’s largest welfare programmes, the next challenge is ensuring complete financial transparency.

The government will now face scrutiny over four critical figures: the total amount paid to ineligible beneficiaries, the amount identified for recovery, the amount actually recovered and the beneficiaries from whom the money was recovered.

Publishing these details would not only establish the effectiveness of the verification drive but also provide a clearer picture of the scheme’s financial sustainability and the government’s ability to prevent leakage of public funds.

Source: Nagpur Today