Over 12,000 Men Found Claiming Women Welfare Benefits In Maharashtra: Report

At least 12,431 men were wrongfully receiving payments under Maharashtra's Mukhyamantri Majhi Ladki Bahin Yojana, a welfare initiative launched exclusively for women, a recent report in The Indian Express found. The total amount wrongly disbursed is estimated at ₹164.52 crore, including ₹24.24 crore paid to men and ₹140.28 crore to women later deemed ineligible, according to data obtained through a Right to Information (RTI) query.

Introduced in June 2024, the scheme offers ₹1,500 per month to women aged 21 to 65 years from families with an annual income below ₹2.5 lakh. However, an RTI response from the Women and Child Development (WCD) Department, which oversees the scheme, showed that thousands of unqualified beneficiaries — including men and nearly 78,000 ineligible women — had received funds for several months before being flagged during verification drives.

Currently, about 2.41 crore women are registered under the program, which costs the state treasury roughly ₹3,700 crore each month.

Misuse of women welfare schemes

Officials confirmed that payments to these accounts have now been halted, though no money has yet been recovered. Another RTI response cited by The Indian Express indicated that around 2,400 government employees, some of them men, were also availing the scheme despite being disqualified by its eligibility rules.

The irregularities reportedly surfaced during a statewide verification campaign, which exposed errors such as incorrect data entry, falsified income details, and duplicate beneficiaries. Departments where discrepancies were discovered include Agriculture, Social Welfare, Tribal Development, and Ayurveda, along with several Zilla Parishads. While disciplinary action has begun, financial recovery is still pending.

Earlier in August 2025, Maharashtra’s Women and Child Development Minister Aditi Tatkare disclosed that preliminary data from the Department of Information and Technology suggested nearly 26 lakh beneficiaries might not meet the scheme’s criteria. Consequently, the government temporarily suspended payments to 26.34 lakh accounts between June and July 2025 until further verification.

To prevent further misuse, the government has reportedly initiated a statewide e-KYC verification process for both existing and new applicants under the scheme.