New Delhi, March 8 Fulfilling the ruling BJP’s flagship Assembly election promise, Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta on Saturday approved a scheme for providing Rs 2,500 monthly financial assistance to eligible women under Mahila Samriddhi Yojana and allocated Rs 5,100 crore for this financial year.
The scheme was approved by a Cabinet meeting chaired by CM Gupta and announced by BJP National President J.P. Nadda at an event to mark International Women’s Day at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium.
“I congratulate PM Modi and CM Rekha Gupta that before coming to this event her Cabinet approved the Rs 2,500 per month Mahila Samriddhi Yojana for women in Delhi,” he said.
Nadda also reiterated PM Modi’s promise to promote women-led development and enlisted the decisions by CM Gupta to improve Delhi women’s security by increasing the number of CCTV cameras, increasing the number of Pink PCR vans with women staff, increasing the number of pink toilets and starting one-stop centres for women for filing complaints and legal aid.
While the details of the eligibility criteria were still to be announced, sources said the scheme is estimated to benefit 15-20 lakh women between 18-60 years from families with an annual income of up to Rs 3 lakh, with a special focus on Below Poverty Line (BPL) sections.
As per the draft eligibility criterion, a beneficiary should be a resident of Delhi for the past five years and have a bank account linked to an Aadhaar number.
Most importantly, beneficiaries of the Mahila Samriddhi Yojana should not be enlisted for any other government financial assistance scheme like widow pension.
The beneficiaries will be able to register online and the software will have multi-level antecedent verification to keep out “bogus or fake” beneficiaries like the Union government's Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) programme.
Earlier, Nadda hit out at the AAP government and its leader Arvind Kejriwal for calling his party’s CM a “temporary CM”.
“PM Modi has given Delhi not a temporary but a tikao (long lasting) CM,” he said, recalling how the previous AAP party ill-treated one of its woman MPs and how one AAP legislator let loose his dog on his wife.
Nadda also slammed the Congress saying that it was no different as it failed to focus on women-led development.
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