CHANDIGARH: The cash-strapped AAP government in Punjab is dealing with a Rs 12,000-crore ‘reality cheque‘ after doing the maths for the Arvind Kejriwal-led party’s pre-poll promise of a Rs 1,100 monthly allowance each to women over 18.
Indications are that the Bhagwant Mann govt is open to tweaking the scheme to ensure its implementation doesn’t clean out the exchequer, although there is no clarity yet if an allocation would be made in the 2025-26 state budget.
Sources said the state department of social security, women and child development had come out with various options, one of which is to limit the scheme to single women and breadwinners. Alternatively, if govt sticks to the original plan, income tax-paying women could be excluded from the list of beneficiaries.
Punjab minister for social justice and empowerment Baljit Kaur told TOI that the groundwork for the scheme had been completed in keeping with AAP govt’s commitment to the people. She said the onus was on finance department to decide when to go ahead with the scheme. Kaur confirmed that the department would need an allocation of Rs 900-1,000 crore a month to fund a scheme covering all women above 18, as originally planned.
Sources said that during internal discussions last year involving the CM, it was decided not to exclude any section of eligible women from the ambit of the scheme. Its implementation was put on the backburner due to financial constraints.
An official said the burden on the exchequer and the number of beneficiaries would depend on whether any exclusion criterion would be applied while notifying the scheme.
According to Election Commission data, Punjab had 96.19 lakh registered women voters for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, which increased to 1.07 crore in 2024.
The gap between political promise and financial feasibility was a hot-button issue during the Delhi assembly polls, putting AAP on the defensive. One of AAP’s big-ticket promises to voters in Delhi was a monthly allowance of Rs 2,000 each for women above 18, leading many to question why a similar scheme announced in Punjab was still to be rolled out.
Punjab’s debt is expected to touch Rs 3.7 lakh crore by the end of 2024-25, accounting for more than 46% of the state’s GDP of over Rs 8 lakh crore.
“AAP govt initially promised a ‘rangla Punjab’ (vibrant Punjab), but in three years, they turned the state into ‘gandhla Punjab’ (toxic Punjab),” LoP Partap Singh Bajwa said.