Radhika Kamble, 49, seethes with anger each time somebody mentions the Ladki Bahin Yojana, Maharashtra’s welfare initiative focused at ladies. She feels betrayed, as a result of two years after the scheme’s announcement, she has not but been in a position to turn into a beneficiary. For a widow taking good care of the family, the method was too overwhelming and there was no assist, she says.
However that was not what left her feeling weak. Inside months of her husband dying, she was requested to take {a photograph} bereft of the mangalsutra, a logo of marriage.
“They informed me that the officers ought to be capable to simply determine ladies who really want the cash. Married ladies don’t want it as a lot. We’d like it probably the most. The federal government will perceive after taking a look at our images, we have been informed,” she says. She chokes on her feelings. Sitting in a small, unventilated room in Sangamnagar, Mumbai, she goes via the paperwork and her photograph repeatedly. Annoyed, she says, “Perhaps cash just isn’t written into my destiny.”
Glitches and complications
The Maharashtra authorities launched the Mukhyamantri Majhi Ladki Bahin Yojana on June 28, 2024, beneath the management of then Chief Minister Eknath Shinde, “to advertise ladies’s financial independence, enhance their well being and vitamin, and strengthen their decisive function within the household,” as per the coverage doc.
The federal government stated the scheme would supply ₹1,500 through a Direct Profit Switch to ladies in Maharashtra between ages 21 and 65 years, from low-income households. The household’s annual revenue was to be under ₹2.5 lakh.
Mukhyamantri Majhi Ladki Bahin Yojana — translated because the Chief Minister’s ‘My Favorite Sister’ scheme — was modelled on an identical scheme in Madhya Pradesh, and was anticipated to price the federal government ₹46,000 crore yearly.
The federal government launched phrases and situations for the scheme. Girls who had a member of the family with authorities employment, or belonging to households that paid taxes, or belonged to households that owned a automotive didn’t qualify. There was a cap of two ladies per family who might get the money profit. Those that have been getting comparable quantities of cash from different authorities schemes have been additionally not eligible.
In July, the primary month after the scheme was launched, the federal government obtained 1.5 crore functions from throughout Maharashtra, says Amol Shinde, who was the top of the CM Welfare Cell when the scheme was launched within the earlier Eknath Shinde authorities. The primary funds to the 1.5 crore ladies began in August 2024, two days forward of Raksha Bandhan, and some months forward of the Meeting elections. Girls thronged banks to get their Know-Your-Buyer (KYC) established, so they might avail themselves of the cash. Within the second month, September, about 2.6 crore ladies have been registered. The scrutiny of the functions than started going down and solely 2.4 crore obtained the profit, says Shinde. The federal government subsequently launched one other situation requiring ladies to finish e-KYC verification, after which the variety of beneficiaries started to say no. In December 2025, the variety of beneficiaries was 1.57 crore.
Girls tie rakhis to then Mahrashtra CM Eknath Shinde after the launch of the “Mukhyamantri Majhi Ladki Bahin” scheme, at Vidhan Bhavan in Mumbai on June 29, 2024.
| Photograph Credit score:
ANI
Many ladies say the funds got here for a number of months, after which merely stopped, regardless of all documentation being full. Some beneficiaries are nonetheless struggling to hyperlink their Aadhaar numbers to their financial institution accounts via an internet system that always requires exterior help to finish the mandatory varieties.
The Opposition in Maharashtra has educated its weapons on the federal government for slashing the variety of beneficiaries, and for the monetary pressure the scheme has placed on the State exchequer. It has accused the federal government of diverting funds from different welfare schemes to proceed giving advantages beneath Majhi Ladki Bahin.
In June 2025, Nationalist Congress Occasion (SP) MP Supriya Sule informed reporters that the scheme was a ₹4,800 crore fraud, with 14,000 males benefiting from it. She known as for a white paper and a Particular Investigation Report (SIT) on the scheme, saying many deserving ladies had been omitted.
In 2025, flawed e-KYC questions wrongly flagged 24 lakh beneficiaries as authorities staff, halting their instalments, in accordance with the Girls and Youngster Improvement Division. Technical points and glitches with the portal have plagued the efficient rollout of the scheme up to now, with ladies complaining of OTP failures, Aadhaar-bank linkage errors, and knowledge mismatches.
In July 2025, a verification drive led to the suspension of 26.34 lakh accounts as a consequence of irregularities, together with a number of claims throughout the similar household, males receiving funds, and beneficiaries availing themselves of twin scheme advantages. Re-verification was subsequently performed by district collectors. In January 2026, the e-KYC deadline was prolonged as a ‘final likelihood’ to rectify errors/OTP points, till March 31, 2026.
Girls converse out
In Mumbai’s Sangamnagar, Radhika, a mom of two, each of their 20s, misplaced her husband. A clerk, he fell and broke his hip. “We didn’t have the cash to get him operated on,” she says. He ultimately died.
The interval after his dying is a fog for her. When the scheme was introduced, a neighborhood politician introduced tempos with native get together staff, who went door-to-door distributing varieties for the scheme. Many ladies stated they queued up at these tempos to submit the varieties together with their paperwork.
Radhika was one in all them. When she didn’t get any instalment as different ladies began getting theirs of their account, she went to her financial institution to inquire. They requested her to test on-line. The operator of the cybercafe round her home requested her to go to her financial institution, saying some KYC documentation was pending. She went repeatedly between the financial institution and the cybercafe. Every time she needed to journey to the nationalised financial institution, she must skip work, the odd jobs she had picked up within the neighborhood.
“After a number of visits, my son requested me to not really feel bitter and to surrender on it. I nonetheless really feel there needs to be some decision. However there isn’t any helpline, no person to information me,” she says. Now, with a brand new window for e-KYC opening up, she has crammed it on-line and hopes to be enrolled as a beneficiary.
It’s comparable for Shakuntala Devi, 55, whose checking account was not linked to her Aadhaar quantity. Devi stays along with her husband, two daughters, and a grand-daughter. She misplaced her son final yr. Her husband is a taxi driver.
“Her account was shut down routinely,” says her 26-year-old daughter Nandini Gautam. “We don’t know if it was as a result of it was inactive. We opened one other account and linked it along with her Aadhaar, however the report confirmed that the seeding was inactive. The financial institution informed us to refill a DBT kind. We did it. And but, she hasn’t acquired a single instalment as but.”
Nandini was herself getting instalments until December 2025, when she was requested to do the KYC once more. The server points and web site issues didn’t enable her to finish the KYC course of within the stipulated time, she says, including that she has now accomplished the method on the cellphone after the brand new window opened up.
Pragati Nakti, 22, mom to a child, used to get her instalments usually with none issues until June 2025. Then, they stopped. She doesn’t know why. Nothing has modified, she says, including that the put up workplace the place her cash used to get deposited, can’t discover a motive both. She lives along with her brother, dad and mom, and uncle, and is the one lady of the home who has crammed the shape.
Aside from filling the shape on-line on the portal, many ladies have additionally crammed up offline varieties through Anganwadi sevikas, ASHA staff, and gram sevaks. In reality, a couple of months in the past, the ASHA staff and Anganwadi sevikas refused to shoulder the additional burden of labor any extra.
Utilizing the funds
Girls say the cash helps them spend on drugs, on youngsters’s meals and schooling, and on the every day wants of the household. “We don’t must ask our husbands for cash any extra. We get our personal cash. It feels good. However we have no idea for how lengthy we are going to get it. There may be all the time a way that it will cease any minute,” says Shabnam Abdul Gaffar Shah, a 35-year previous mom of 5, in Mumbai’s Indiranagar.
The scheme helped buffer the shock of floods in Maharashtra’s Marathwada in 2025. It has helped within the empowerment of ladies, giving a lift to the agricultural financial system, says Shinde.
He says they garnered this intelligence from the ladies. “We had fashioned a helpline to hunt responses of ladies who have been the early beneficiaries. It was astounding, the affect the scheme had. Retailers began flourishing once more. Girls have been seen to be spending totally on healthcare, on youngsters’s schooling, clothes,” he says.
Shinde says that whereas Madhya Pradesh’s Ladli Behna Yojana was their function mannequin, the federal government drew inspiration from the success of its personal scheme, Shasan Aplya Daari, which interprets to authorities at the doorstep. Below this scheme, the federal government approached individuals with its schemes to extend the variety of beneficiaries.
“We realised after the evaluation of knowledge that only a few ladies have been drawing advantages from authorities schemes. That’s after we thought we would have liked to do one thing to extend the protection of ladies,” he says. On the time, the Opposition had criticised the timing of the scheme, contemplating it got here simply earlier than the Maharashtra elections.
As a pilot, the Mukhyamantri Mahila Sashaktikaran Abhiyaan or Chief Minister’s Girls Empowerment Drive was launched in two districts of Maharashtra. It was withdrawn virtually instantly as a consequence of technical points, however was reintroduced after the federal government order was modified on October 6, 2023.
“Impressed by its success, we launched the Nari Shaktidoot app. Inside sooner or later, 50,000 ladies registered on it. After we noticed that girls have been conscious and desirous about schemes, we labored to roll out this scheme in precisely three months. After the announcement, 2.47 crore ladies enrolled themselves. It was a report, and a really satisfying course of,” he stated.
He added that he had ready a listing of 10 names, and that the then Chief Minister Eknath Shinde had favored and chosen the present identify ‘Mukhyamantri Majhi Ladki Bahin Yojana’.
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