BHOPAL: The long-awaited Rs 250 monthly hike under the Chief Minister Ladli Behna Scheme will happen on the festival of lights – Diwali, chief minister Dr Mohan Yadav announced on Thursday.“Our Sankalp Patra (2023 poll manifesto) promised to raise the monthly sum under the scheme to Rs 3000 in five years. We will give additional Rs 250 (above the Rs 1250 per month sum) on Raksha Bandhan and then hike the monthly sum to Rs 1500 from Diwali,” the MP CM announced in Indore on Thursday.“We’ll increase the monthly sum again in 2026 and then in 2027 and by the time of the next assembly elections in 2028, we will hike the monthly sum to Rs 3000 at all costs,” Yadav added.The scheme aimed to render monthly financial benefits to financially weak women was launched by then MP CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan in June 2023 at Jabalpur, by crediting the first Rs 1000 monthly instalment into the accounts of the beneficiaries. Chouhan, the current union agriculture minister, had at the time of the scheme’s launch in June 2023, promised to increase the monthly benefits under the scheme gradually by Rs 250 per month over a period of time, to ultimately take the monthly sum to Rs 3000.In line with that promise, Chouhan had hiked the Rs 1000 monthly sum by Rs 250 to Rs 1250 in September 2023 – just two months before the assembly polls, in which the monthly benefit scheme turned out to be a game-changer for the BJP, rendering it an unprecedented victory.Since then, the monthly sum under the scheme has remained unchanged, often prompting the opposition Congress to question when the monthly sum be hiked and ultimately be taken to Rs 3000 per month.In the 2025-26 MP annual budget, a sum of Rs 18,669 crore has been allocated for benefits under the Ladli Behna Scheme to 1.27 crore beneficiary women.The state’s budget had also mentioned providing insurance and pension cover to the beneficiaries of the same scheme by linking them with central government’s insurance and pension schemes. The scheme which also played a key role in the crucial women vote siding with the BJP in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, rendering it a historic 29-0 win in the state, has also inspired similar direct monetary benefit scheme for financially weak women in other BJP ruled states, including Maharashtra, Haryana, Chhattisgarh and Delhi.
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