Maharashtra Scheme Deletions and Financial Irregularities

Nearly four out of every ten women enrolled in Maharashtra’s Mukhyamantri Majhi Ladki Bahin Yojana were pulled out after a massive statewide check. Government records, seen by The Indian Express, show more than 92 lakh women dropped from the scheme.

The numbers are bigger than what the state government has actually admitted so far. The deletions found during this verification are significantly higher than the nearly 80 lakh they’ve publicly talked about.

What happened? Mostly, people couldn't finish the mandatory electronic Know Your Customer process, the eKYC . But some were ineligible too income issues, wrong age, employment status, or they were getting benefits somewhere else already.

Officials running this check estimated that those removed had received around 14,000 crore before payments just stopped. That’s a huge number of lost funds.

On average, folks whose benefits were halted got help for almost ten months. There wasn't one fixed cut-off date either; they caught people at different points during the verification. It’s messy tracking this stuff.

This all feels important because the Comptroller and Auditor General has already raised flags about how the scheme was managed. The State Finances Audit Report 2024-25 brought this up.

Looking closer, some specifics emerged. Sixteen lakh beneficiaries that’s about seventeen percent were from families whose yearly income blew past the eligibility limit of Rs 2.5 lakh.

Then there were other issues. About 4.42 lakh people declared they or a family member worked for the government. That made them ineligible, plain and simple.

And then there was the overlapping benefits problem. Around 3.6 lakh women were already getting help under another scheme, Sanjay Gandhi Niradhar Yojana. Plus, nearly 2.5 lakh cases involved more than two people in the same family drawing money. It got complicated fast.

Age was another factor. Nearly 1.8 lakh beneficiaries were over the age limit of 65. And district-level checks flagged another 1.7 lakh cases just based on that.

Separately, they found men too. Almost 29,000 men and about 8,000 government employees had also received benefits even though they shouldn't have.

The response from the state came later. Maharashtra Women and Child Development Minister Aditi Tatkare said things were complicated by timing. She quoted that the mandatory eKYC couldn’t start right after launch because of election schedules and the Model Code of Conduct rules kicking in before October.

She added that they only started the real exercise in August 2025, once the new government was in place. And payments for those who didn't finish the eKYC were stopped then. They even gave extensions until December 31, 2025, just to let people catch up before cutting off the money flow.

When asked about recovering the lost cash? Tatkare said something was different for men and government staff. Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis had mentioned in the Assembly that they wouldn't recover money from those groups. That’s a specific political angle there.

But the big financial picture remains shaky. The CAG report really hit hard on how the money moved around. It flagged major issues with budget estimates and control. And excess spending is a huge part of it.

The audit showed that the Women and Child Development Department spent Rs 33,237.24 crore against an authorized budget of Rs 29,693.09 crore on this scheme. That’s an overspend of Rs 3,541.16 crore. The department didn't provide any real justification for that extra cash spent.

The CAG also looked at the money parked somewhere. Fifteen thousand five hundred eighty-six crore was moved into Virtual Personal Deposit Accounts, or VPDAs, between January and March 2025. That practice? It came across as a serious financial irregularity. The withdrawal pattern suggested the funds weren't needed right away. They were just pulled from the treasury without any clear need for immediate spending.

The overall finding was that implementation suffered "significant deficiencies in budget estimation, expenditure control, and financial management." They recommended a much tougher look at who actually got the benefits and what money was required for these big Direct Benefit Transfer schemes. And they strongly advised against parking those funds in VPDAs. Withdrawals should only happen when actual spending is immediate.

The scheme itself provides Rs 1,500 a month via DBT to eligible women between 21 and 65, aiming for economic independence. But the delivery system seems riddled with these kinds of gaps.