Govt partially suspends registration, process to resume soon after fixing technical challenges involving three documents for beneficiaries.
Pourakarmikas who enrolled with the Gruha Lakshmi scheme in Bengaluru
The amount may seem meagre to many. But for the targeted beneficiaries of the Karnataka government’s Gruha Lakshmi Scheme, ₹2,000 per month will make a huge difference.
The guaranteed ₹2,000 will ease the financial burden on many like Sunandamma J, an Anganwadi teacher at BR Ambedkar Nagar near Ullal Upanagara, a western suburb of Bengaluru. On being informed of the scheme, she, along with friends, had applied for it.
She is now confused and worried.
The money has not come to her bank account. She suspects that it has been withheld since she had not sought the permission of the higher-ups in the department (Department of Women and Child Development Empowerment of Differently Abled and Senior Citizens) before applying for the monthly financial aid.
Sunandamma, however, knows she is not the only one who has been not credited with the guaranteed money. Of the 20-odd women she knows who had applied for the aid, only three to four have received the money.
Pourakarmika (municipal worker) Shobha registered for the scheme on 27 July. The 39-year-old woman is equally worried as Sunandamma since the money hasn’t come through.
Sunandamma J, Anganwadi teacher and Jayalakshmi, a guardian of a student at the Anganwadi in BR Ambedkar Nagar. (Supplied)
“I applied at the BangaloreOne office at the BDA Complex in Nagarbhavi. An OTP was delivered to my mobile phone and my application was also successfully submitted. I don’t know why the money hasn’t been credited,” Shobha told South First.
Even as Shobha remained wondering, her friend Manjula S, also a pourakarmika who doubles up as a domestic help to make ends meet, received the money in her bank account. It prompted Shobha to visit her bank, suspecting some error might be preventing the money from being credited into her account,
The bank gave her a blunt reply. The government has not deposited money into her account. She was also told to contact the Department of Food and Civil Supplies.
Jayalakshmi, 60, in Shobha’s neighbourhood, too, hasn’t received the money, though she had applied in the last week of July. She has not even received the promised ₹650 for the additional five kg of rice for her family of four.
Sunandamma, Shobha, and Jayalakshmi represent several eligible women in Karnataka who haven’t received the benefits of the Gruha Lakshmi Scheme — one of the five poll guarantees of the Congress government, providing cash assistance of ₹2,000 every month to women heads of households in the state — launched on 30 August.
Manjula, 44, however, has another story. A pourakarmika in Ullal Upanagara, she had lost her husband 20 years ago. Her name figures as the head of the family on the ration card, and has an Aadhaar-linked bank account.
Manjula showing her text message that said ₹2,000 has been credited into her account. (Supplied)
She doesn’t have to pay the power bill of ₹300 to ₹400 every month and is also receiving ₹340 for the additional five kg of rice, besides the promised Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) of ₹2,000 under the Gruha Lakshmi Scheme. The government is providing free power, and instead of free food grain, is reimbursing the money spent on purchasing an additional five kg of rice.
Manjula had applied for the DBT at a BangaloreOne office at Nagarbhavi in the second week of August. She now lives with her nonagenarian mother, and her daughter stays nearby with her family.
Prashanth, a local activist of a Dalit organisation, the BR Ambedkar Slum Janandholana, is busy compiling a list of women who haven’t received the Gruha Lakshmi benefit, despite applying.
“There are many women, including my wife, Sathya V, who have applied for the scheme from this area but haven’t got it. We are making a list — collecting the names and other details of women — and will submit it to the Food and Civil Supplies Department, with a petition to allow them to re-apply for the scheme,” he told South First.
A manager at a BangaloreOne centre at the BDA Complex in Nagarbhavi explained the possible reasons for the exclusion of so many women.
Local activist Prashanth with his wife Sathya and their son. (Supplied)
“We can complete the application submission process if the beneficiary has three documents: An Aadhaar card, ration card, and bank account details. However, there are conditions. The Aadhaar card should be an updated one (updated in the past 10 years); the woman’s name should be mentioned as the head of the family in the ration card; and third, the bank account should be linked with the updated Aadhaar card and PAN,” the manager, who did not want to be named, told South First.
He added that women could change the name of the head of the family in their respective ration shops.
Over the past 1.5 months, at least 400 to 500 women have been visiting the BangaloreOne centre at Nagarbhavi to apply for the Gruha Lakshmi scheme each day. Their number swells to around 800 on weekends.
“Our staff members have been working from 8 am to 7 pm. There would be long queues and tokens are issued from as early as 5 am,” the manager said.
According to officials of the Department of Women and Child Development Empowerment of Differently Abled and Senior Citizens, around 1.12 crore women across Karnataka had registered for the Gruha Lakshmi scheme till 6 September.
The department’s target is to cover 1.26 crore women. The state government has earmarked ₹17,500 crore for the programme in the current financial year, and around ₹32,000 crore for the next year.
The state government temporarily suspended the registration process due to the confusion and to allow women to get their documents ready. The government plans to put in place a single-window mechanism to address all the issues.
According to the Food and Civil Supplies Department, more than six lakh BPL ration cards have men as the head of the family. In such cases, women are not eligible for the Gruha Lakshmi benefits.
The Department of Women and Child Development Empowerment of Differently Abled and Senior Citizens posted on social media on 6 September that the government has stopped Gruha Lakshmi registrations. The post went viral and created a lot of confusion.
Though the tweet was deleted the same day, Women and Child Welfare Minister Laxmi Hebbalkar had to intervene and clarify that the registration process would resume shortly.
The minister also convened a meeting at Vidhana Soudha on 7 September to reiterate that the registration process has only been temporarily suspended to avoid confusion over depositing ₹2,000 in the accounts of beneficiaries.
“Before the first installment of Gruha Lakshmi scheme was disbursed, the department filtered a large number of applications,” the manager of a BangaloreOne centre said.
“If either the woman — the head of the family — or her husband is a taxpayer, she is not entitled to this scheme. It does not matter if her son/daughter/son-in-law/daughter-in-law are taxpayers. If neither she nor her husband are paying tax, then she is entitled to benefit from this scheme,” he explained.
“Second, if any businesses are operating under the woman’s name and GST or TIN numbers are issued to her or her spouse, then they are not eligible for the scheme. This is to ensure that the scheme benefits women falling under the BPL section and the women from the rural sectors,” he said.
He added that women who are getting pensions and who have loans in their names can also register for this scheme.
The manager also said that once the scheme is implemented, then there would be assessments and inspections and if beneficiaries are found violating the norms, they will be penalised around 10 times the amount they have taken from the government.
Sources in the Department of Women and Child Development said that the Gruha Lakshmi registration process will resume once IDs are given to BangaloreOne centres for rectifying the issues about the three documents: Aadhaar, ration card, and bank details.
“Women who enroll for this scheme need not go to ration/rice shops to get their names added as the head of the family. Instead, they could do it at the BangaloreOne centre’s portal. Even the Aadhaar could be updated and linked with bank KYCs, and PAN at these centres,” the source said.
The Gruha Lakshmi scheme has evoked a good response in rural Karnataka so far, with a majority of women who have enrolled receiving their first installment of ₹2,000.
Vaishali S Kammar, a representative of Stree Jagruti Samiti and the Domestic Workers Rights Union (DWRU) in Belagavi told South First that she helped around a hundred women to register for the Gruha Lakshmi scheme, but nearly half of them have not received the money.
“In some cases, ₹2000 has been credited to Dharmasthala group accounts and for some women, the money has been credited to their post office accounts. We have to bring this to the notice of the department for rectification,” Kammar said.
She opined that the state government should have initially created awareness before starting the registration process. “Without any awareness campaign, the registration process of the scheme kicked off and that is the reason why it has hit a roadblock,” Kammar said.
She added that most single women who had applied received the money, but several others have been left out.
“I received ₹ 2,000 financial aid under Gruha Lakshmi Yojana in the last week of August. I faced no hurdles while registering for the scheme as I submitted all the required documents,” homemaker Kavitha Simikeri, a resident of Rona taluka in Gadag district, told South First.
“We are completely dependent on farming. This year, the monsoon has failed us and our hope of getting good yield has also vanished. This amount will help us to meet monthly expenses. It reduces the burden and worries too,” she added.
Thippamma Patil, a farmer in Bagalkot, however, is disappointed. “My application was rejected because there were some errors in the documents. I did not have a bank account. I gave my husband’s account details. The application got rejected,” she said.
“I am opening a bank account now. I will re-submit the application with proper and relevant documents. The amount will help us to spend on groceries, gas, and other items. I hope this time my application is accepted,” she said.
The state government is gearing up to carry out a public assessment of the four guarantees that have been launched.
Of the five guarantees, the government has already launched the Shakti Scheme, Gruha Jyothi, Gruha Lakshmi Yojana, and Anna Bhagya. It is yet to launch the Yuva Nidhi scheme.
“We are planning to conduct an assessment and evaluation of the guarantees. The Finance Department has asked its Fiscal Policy Institute (FPI), which is a research and training institution of the Finance Department, to collaborate with other research, and academic agencies/institutions to take up evaluation,” Finance Department’s Additional Chief Secretary LK Atheeq told South First.
“The FPI is talking to other academic institutions like XKDR (Cross-Disciplinary Knowledge Data Research), Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy, J-PAL (The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab),” he further said while offering support to any academic institution or university that may want to evaluate the impact of the schemes.
State Institute for the Transformation of Karnataka (SITK) vice-chairman Rajeev Gowda welcomed the evaluation initiative. “It will be good if we carry out a public assessment of these guarantees. It has been hardly two to three months since these guarantees have been rolled out. It will be too early,” he opined.
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