Clamour for Ladki Bahin scheme sparks hope of Mahayuti’s revival
The portal has crashed multiple times and the government is flooded with complaints about poor internet connectivity in rural areas and queues outside offices
Mumbai/ Pune: At a recent Congress membership drive camp in Mumbai, there was a beeline to collect forms—not for party membership though. Instead, the people queued up were looking for forms to avail the Ladki Bahin scheme.
“We smote our foreheads, and had to tell these people that that was a government scheme,” says a rueful Congress leader.
On June 28, following a disastrous showing in the Lok Sabha elections winning 17 of 48 seats, the Maharashtra ruling alliance launched Mukhyamantri Majhi Ladki Bahin Yojana (MMLBY). It’s inspired by Madhya Pradesh government’s popular Ladli Behna scheme. Within 45 days of that announcement, the government received 1.32 crore applications from women across the state for the ₹1500 monthly dole. Stunned by the response, and seeing this as a potential gamechanger for the Assembly elections later this year, the government paused every other scheme to focus on implementing MMLBY. Though the official launch was slated for August 19 on Raksha Bandhan day, the first tranche of ₹1500 has already been credited.
The clamour among women to file applications before the August 31 deadline has been such that the portal https://ladakibahin.maharashtra.gov.in crashed multiple times and the government is flooded with complaints about poor internet connectivity in rural areas, snaking queues outside government offices for income certificates, and lack of bank accounts for women.
Janabai Ohwal, 52, from Bhalavani village in Pandharpur tehsil, said that she failed to submit her application because she did not have a school certificate. “My daughter filed her application through her mobile but when she tries to submit mine, the system said no new applications were being accepted.” The list of documents required is daunting for most: Family income certificate attesting it to be under ₹2.5 lakh per annum issued by the local tehsil; domicile certificate, ration card or proof of birth (women aged between 21-65 are eligible for the scheme), marriage certificate and an Aadhaar-linked bank account. Single women in the specified age group and income bracket are also eligible for the scheme.
“In lower income families it’s uncommon for women to have their own bank accounts,” says Jayshri Hile, an Anganwadi worker from Bhiwandi who is helping women fill out the forms. She says there are days when she has to work past midnight to accommodate all the requests she is getting for help with form-filling.
A cyber cafe owner in Palghar who refused to give his name, said there was a huge problem getting the OTP once a form had been admitted online. “I fill at least 25 forms a day and it takes me 15 minutes per person to do so. The server gets fast only after 9 pm every day and that’s when we do our work,” he said.
Women and child development minister Aditi Tatkare under whose aegis the scheme will run, is pleased with the response. “Around three to four lakh women register every day. The department has received over 1.64 crore applications, of which 1.36 crore applications have been approved after scrutiny.” The highest number of applicants, she discloses, has been from Pune district where 8.5 lakh women have applied while over 6.14 lakh applications have been submitted from Solapur. Women whose applications were rejected have been asked to submit proper documents for reconsideration.
Hidden in this euphoria of numbers lies the grimmer fact that 1.5 crore families and counting, earn less than ₹2.5 lakh per year. According to the Maharashtra Economic Survey 2023-24, 11 districts in the state have a per capita income below ₹1,69,496, and a majority of these lie in Vidarbha and Marathwada.
In the 2024 Lok Sabha election, the ruling alliance won 3 of 10 seats in Vidarbha and 1 out of 8 seats in Marathwada which is also the locus of the nearly year-long agitation for Maratha reservation.
“An economist like Surjit Bhalla too has said recently that poverty in Maharashtra is more severe than even in Bihar,” says economic scholar and former Mumbai University professor Neeraj Hatekar. “Outside of cities like Mumbai and Pune, in the rural areas, the economic distress is palpable and schemes like Ladki Bahin will not really help in poverty eradication.”
High hopes
The three-party ruling alliance is however convinced that the scheme will be a political gamechanger once the women start receiving the money in their account. It has earmarked ₹46,000 crore this fiscal for the scheme with finance minister Ajit Pawar upping the cash benefit to ₹1500 in Maharashtra. MP’s Ladli Behna scheme offers women ₹1000 per month. An additional ₹270 crore has been allocated just to publicize the scheme. After women reported problems logging into the portal, the government launched a mobile app called Narishakti Doot to facilitate registration. But this has led to the unforeseen problem of duplication of forms. Parrag Jaiin Nainuttia, principal secretary, state information technology (IT) department, said, “There was a peak load on the site with six lakh hits per minute and that’s when the site slowed down. The response has been really great. We have given additional servers and load balancers in the whole system.”
A housemaid in Dombivli, Sheetal Mendale, 35, said she had requested a college student who is the relative of one of her neighbours, to help her enrol. “This ₹1,500 will be a big help to me as it will help me save money for any medical emergency,” she said. Mendale works in five homes and lives with three children in a slum. Her annual income is under ₹72,000 p.a.
As per the election commission figure, Maharashtra has 4,46,25,742 female voters. The government is hopeful of targeting 2,45,00,000 women with the scheme ahead of the election. Chief minister Eknath Shinde who has taken ownership of the scheme by calling it Mukhyamantri Majhi Ladki Bahin Yojana, much to the chagrin of the BJP, has directed the state administration to ensure only forms of MMLBY scheme will be filled at all the setu kendras set up by the state government across the state. This resulted in delay in application forms for crop insurance scheme for farmers leading to much resentment among them. The directive was subsequently withdrawn.
Deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar who now sports only pink waistcoats as part of his brand upgrade to seem more women friendly, too has announced that for some time the government’s only fiscal priority is paying salaries of government employees and on-time payment towards MMLBY. When the state agriculture department asked him for timeline for free distribution of Nano Urea and Nano DAP (fertilizer) to the 90 lakh farmers covered under PM Kisan Sanman Nidhi, Pawar asked them to wait until the first few tranches had been disbursed under Majhi Ladki Bahin.
At a recent rally in Nashik as part of his election outreach, he told the crowds: “Push our symbol button and only then will the Ladki Bahin scheme continue as it has been brought in by us.”
Opposition parties, who concede the impact of the scheme in private, have publicly attacked the government for playing to the gallery. “It seems that before the Lok Sabha elections, the women in the state, their ‘sisters’ were not dear to them. Why is this slew of populist announcement coming only after they did so poorly in Lok Sabha?” asks NCP (SP) leader Jayant Patil.
With inputs from Yogesh Naik and Shrinivas Deshpande