Big Ladki Bahin irregularity: Rs 9,605 crore paid to 92 lakh ineligible beneficiaries

Nagpur Today

Mumbai: Maharashtra’s flagship Mukhyamantri Majhi Ladki Bahin Yojana has come under intense scrutiny after an RTI reply revealed that the State Government disbursed a staggering Rs 9,605 crore to 92 lakh beneficiaries who were later found ineligible under the scheme until June 2026.

The figures expose the massive scale of irregular payments under the scheme, which was launched by the BJP-led Mahayuti government in August 2024 with the promise of providing Rs 1,500 per month through Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) to eligible women from economically weaker sections.

The revelations have raised serious questions over the government’s beneficiary verification mechanism and the manner in which public funds were distributed before eligibility was adequately established.

According to the RTI information, the government subsequently identified 92 lakh beneficiaries who did not meet the scheme’s eligibility conditions. The largest category—around 62 lakh beneficiaries, was removed for failing to complete the mandatory e-KYC process.

Another 16 lakh beneficiaries were found to have family incomes exceeding the prescribed annual ceiling of Rs 2.5 lakh. Around 3.6 lakh were already receiving benefits under the Sanjay Gandhi Niradhar Anudan Yojana, while 2.5 lakh were deleted after it was found that another member of their family was already enrolled under Ladki Bahin.

The verification also found 1.8 lakh beneficiaries above the maximum age limit of 65 years and around 4.5 lakh government employees who had received benefits despite being ineligible. A further 1.7 lakh beneficiaries were excluded following district-level verification.

Beneficiary numbers had soared

The extent of the problem becomes clearer from the beneficiary figures. The number of beneficiaries currently considered eligible stands at around 1.657 crore. However, more than 2.1 crore beneficiaries received payments for 17 months until November 2025.

Between February and May 2025, the beneficiary count reportedly peaked at 2.472 crore, pushing the monthly payout beyond Rs 3,640 crore, against the approximately Rs 2,450 crore that should have been disbursed based on the eligible beneficiary count.

Over 24 months, the government spent around Rs 76,261 crore under the scheme.

The RTI data further indicates that the government should have recorded around 39.758 crore payment credit entries during the 24-month period. Instead, the system recorded nearly 46.1 crore entries.

The difference of around 6.403 crore credit entries translated into Rs 9,605 crore being transferred to beneficiaries who were subsequently found ineligible, according to the RTI response.

Only government employees face recovery

Despite the huge amount involved, the government has decided not to recover the money from most of the beneficiaries who were subsequently found ineligible.

According to a senior official of the Women and Child Development Department, the government has initiated steps to recover payments specifically from government employees and officers who had received Ladki Bahin benefits despite being ineligible.

District collectorates have been directed to identify such beneficiaries and recover the amounts paid to them. Around 4.5 lakh government employees have reportedly been identified in this category.

However, no recovery is proposed from the other categories of ineligible beneficiaries, the official said.

e-KYC raises another question

The RTI findings have also thrown the spotlight on the e-KYC verification exercise. Following the April 30 deadline, the beneficiary count reportedly fell from around 2.4 crore to nearly 1.7 crore.

Officials indicated that a significant number of beneficiaries who failed to complete e-KYC may have avoided the process because they feared that verification would expose their ineligibility and lead to action over the benefits already received.

The scale of the disbursement has now intensified questions over how so many ineligible beneficiaries entered the scheme in the first place and why the discrepancies were not detected earlier.

The RTI revelations are likely to fuel demands for greater accountability, a detailed audit of the scheme and stronger safeguards to prevent the leakage of public money in future.

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