Is Maharashtra’s Ladki Bahin Yojana facing a budget cut?

“The verification drive has removed nearly 60 lakh beneficiaries from the rolls. The numbers have stabilised post-verification and the allocation will reflect that. We are looking at whether the reduction in beneficiaries translates into savings of up to Rs 9,000 crore and whether that should be passed on in the Budget allocation,” said a source, who did not wish to be identified.

Finance Secretary OP Gupta did not respond to a request for comment on plans for proposing cuts to the scheme following KYC checks and a drop in beneficiaries. But a senior government official told The Indian Express, “The E-KYC verification would go on till March 31, and after that the final number of beneficiaries would also come to fore. Once that is done and if there is a need for increasing or even reducing the funds for the scheme, it can be done through the supplementary demands that are presented thrice in the year during the three sessions.”

In Budget 2025-26, the state had provided Rs 36,000 crore for the scheme. After its launch in July 2024 ahead of the Assembly elections in the state, the beneficiary count surged to about 2.43 crore. At that level, the annual payout at Rs 1,500 per month implied a liability of nearly Rs 43,700 crore. Hence, in the supplement demand for grants, another Rs 6,102 crore was provided, taking the total allocation to Rs 42,102 crore for the current financial year.

The scheme is available to all women aged 21–65 years from families earning less than Rs 2.5 lakh annually. Further, government employees and income-tax payers are excluded under the eligibility criteria. The scheme is amongst the largest unconditional cash transfer schemes in the country which involve direct payments to beneficiaries without performance benchmarks or conditions on how the money is used.

The 16th Finance Commission even singled out the BJP-ruled Maharashtra and Odisha, and opposition-ruled Jharkhand, as among the states that have seen the steepest rise in such spending over the past two years. It has warned that if states continue to allocate rising proportions of revenue expenditure to such transfers, they will not only impose a significant burden on their budgets but also destabilise their finances in the long run. It also recommended periodic review of beneficiary lists and cautioned that once introduced, subsidy schemes tend to become “committed” expenditure, and called for a sunset clause in such direct cash benefit schemes.

Information accessed by The Indian Express earlier under the Right to Information Act had revealed that at least 12,915 government employees received benefits under the scheme despite being explicitly excluded. Earlier disclosures had also shown that at least 12,431 men and 77,980 ineligible women received payments, resulting in wrongful disbursal of at least Rs 164 crore, a figure that could go higher once the overall e-KYC drive is completed by March end this year.

In August last year, the Women and Child Development Department had also flagged nearly 26 lakh accounts for scrutiny and suspended payments to 26.34 lakh beneficiaries pending verification. District-level physical verification was initiated, and a statewide e-KYC drive was made mandatory to prevent further irregularities.

Officials said income thresholds, employment status and duplicate entries were rechecked during the verification process.