Bengal drops 30 lakh women from new cash scheme after voter roll scrutiny

The West Bengal government has removed nearly 30 lakh beneficiaries from the Mamata Banerjee-led Lakshmir Bhandar scheme after a large-scale verification exercise linked to the state’s voter roll revision, Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari said on May 28.

According to the BJP government, those excluded from the beneficiary list were either non-Indian citizens, deceased individuals, or people whose names had been permanently deleted from the electoral rolls during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process.

The announcement came as the state rolled out application and verification forms for women shifting from Lakshmir Bhandar to the newly launched Annapurna Bhandar scheme, which will officially begin on 1 June.

Addressing a press conference at Nabanna, Adhikari said the government carried out a “comprehensive cleansing and verification” of the Lakshmir Bhandar database after doubts emerged over the authenticity of several beneficiaries.

“Our first notion was that the Lakshmir Bhandar list was verified,” Adhikari said, adding that the scrutiny revealed “approximately 30 lakh” ineligible recipients.

The verification process began on May 19 and involved district administrations, booth-level officers and electoral data compiled during the SIR exercise. Officials cross-checked names against the Absent, Shifted, Dead and Duplicate (ASDD) categories identified during the electoral roll revision.

The BJP government has linked welfare eligibility to electoral verification since assuming office on 10 May. Officials clarified that individuals removed from voter rolls during the SIR process would temporarily lose access to welfare benefits unless their citizenship or voter status was restored through tribunals or legal processes.

Adhikari, however, said people who applied under the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) or approached SIR-linked tribunals for inclusion in voter rolls would remain eligible for the Annapurna Bhandar scheme after adjudication.

“No deceased person, illegal infiltrator, or non-Indian individual will be allowed to avail benefits meant for citizens of the state,” he said.

The Annapurna Bhandar scheme replaces Lakshmir Bhandar, one of the flagship welfare programmes of the previous Trinamool Congress government. Under the earlier scheme, women from the general category received ₹1,500 per month, while SC/ST beneficiaries got ₹1,700.

The new BJP government has increased the payout to a flat ₹3,000 per month for eligible women under Annapurna Bhandar, a key promise made during the Assembly election campaign.

Before the transition, around 2.21 crore women were receiving assistance under Lakshmir Bhandar.

The SIR exercise conducted by the Election Commission ahead of the Assembly elections led to the deletion of nearly 91 lakh names from West Bengal’s electoral rolls, roughly 12% of the state’s electorate.

Of these, nearly 58 lakh names were removed under standard ASDD categories, while another 27 lakh were struck off after judicial scrutiny over citizenship and ancestral linkage discrepancies. Several lakh appeals challenging the deletions remain pending before tribunals.

The BJP secured a historic victory in West Bengal Assembly elections on May 4, winning 208 of 294 seats and ending the Trinamool Congress’s 15-year rule in the state.