Around 94% of applications for the Delhi government’s three-month-old flagship financial assistance scheme for women are yet to undergo an initial level of scrutiny, data accessed by HT shows.
“I have not heard anything since, and no information has come on my phone either. On maturity, the FD funds would be credited to the digital wallet. The government received 751,961 applications for availing ₹ 2,500 monthly payments after the launch on August 1. But 704,000 applications are pending with proposed project management units (PMUs) that were to carry out the first stage of scrutiny yet to be set up, officials aware of the matter said. A 40-year-old woman from Sangam Vihar, who works as a cook in Greater Kailash, said she sought help from a neighbourhood cyber cafe to fill out the application. The data accessed by HT shows that an initial 39,274 applications have been approved so far, while 6,242 are facing objections and 1,694 have been rejected. Fixed deposits have been created in the names of 4,488 approved beneficiaries so far, it added.
Women who had applied for the Lakshmi Yojana scheme in August said they are hoping that they will get a response soon. I thought I would use this money to send to my mother back home in Bengal,” she said. Responding to a query from HT, the Delhi government said a tender for hiring a company to run the PMUs was floated well in time but only a single bid was received. “Retendering has been advised by the finance department,” it said. Meanwhile, some applications are being scrutinised, the government said in its response, “with the help of other staff at the disposal of district-level committees, anaganwadi workers and helpers, and ASHA workers, and civil defence volunteers. The government said the CBDC-based payment mechanism was a new digital arrangement that required further strengthening of technical and operational processes, including beneficiary onboarding and wallet activation, in coordination with banks, the Reserve Bank of India and the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI). “To ensure that beneficiaries do not lose out during this period, the government has decided to provide the entire ₹ 2,500 monthly assistance through fixed deposits until January 2027,” the government said in its response.
