With the male-female voter count gap narrowing in West Bengal, women-focussed schemes have got more prominence in the State Budget for the financial year 2025-26.
The Mamata Banerjee government has continued to accord top priority to welfare schemes for women in the Budget ahead of the Assembly elections next year.
“The Government of West Bengal’s innovative initiative ‘Lakshmir Bhandar’ aimed at providing a monthly income for women has expanded its beneficiary base from 1.98 crore in 2023-24 to 2.21 crore in 2024-25. In 2024-25, the Government has spent ₹19,385.39 crore and increased monthly financial assistance to SC and ST beneficiaries from ₹1000 to ₹1200, while for women from other categories from ₹500 to ₹1000,” West Bengal Finance Minister Chandrima Bhattacharya said while presenting the budget in the State Assembly.
Notably, the “Lakshmir Bhandar” scheme is a flagship programme launched by the State Government in February 2021, to provide financial assistance to women from economically weaker sections of society.
For the women and child development and social welfare department, the government has proposed to allocate ₹38,762.03 crore for the year 2025-26. During the year 2024-25, the government had allocated ₹26,590.45 crore for this department.
“Kanyashree Prakalpa’ is now in its 11th year of implementation. Till date it has brought almost 1 crore beneficiaries under its protective umbrella. In 2024-25, 15.75 lakh girls enrolled in the scheme’s annual scholarship component of ₹1000, and 2.01 lakh girls for its one-time grant of ₹25,000, ₹593.51 crore has been released in this year,” Bhattacharya said while presenting the Budget on Wednesday.
In the year 2024-25, the benefits of “Rupashree Prakalpa” reached 2.08 lakh beneficiaries, with a total disbursement of ₹504.25 crore.
Kanyashree Prakalpa seeks to improve the status and wellbeing of girls, specifically those from socio-economically disadvantaged families through conditional cash transfers by incentivizing them to continue in education for a longer period of time. The scheme is also for disincentivizing marriage till at least the age of 18.
“Rupashree Prakalpa” is aimed at mitigating the difficulties that poor families face in bearing the expenditure of their daughters’ marriages.
“Direct benefit transfer to women under different schemes essentially leads to greater women empowerment. It has been witnessed that greater women empowerment results in higher literacy rate and lower infant mortality. It is because women in general control budget allocation and expenditure for households. As funds under different women-centric schemes are being directly transferred to women they can spend it on literacy and health. We have seen that in West Bengal literacy rate has increased, school dropout rate has fallen and infant mortality rate has decreased. Also, the child marriage rate declined,” said economist Ajitava Raychaudhuri.
Significantly, the final voter list published by the Election Commission of India last month revealed the rise of over 2 lakh female voters, compared to around 70,000 male voters since the last Lok Sabha polls conducted in 2024. The figures showed that the male-female voter gap in West Bengal has narrowed.
According to the latest Election Commission data, the state has 3,76,00,611 female voters and 3,87,93,743 male voters, reflecting a gap of 11,93,132 electors, compared to the last Lok Sabha polls where male and female voters numbered 3,87,24,016 and 3,73,98,991, respectively, with a difference of 13,25,025 voters.
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