Around eight lakh women in West Bengal were added to the Annapurna Yojana on Panchami and received Rs 3,000 through direct benefit transfer, taking the scheme’s total beneficiary count to about 1.6 crore, according to a report by the Times of India.
The payments were credited on Thursday, during the Durga Puja period. The latest additions followed the scrutiny of applications submitted after the state government opened the scheme’s online application process in June. An offline application process had begun earlier.
A senior state government official told the Times of India that around two crore applications had been submitted for the scheme. Several applications were rejected for various reasons, while a few thousand remained under process. The official said around 1.5 crore women had received the benefit before Mahalaya.
The latest transfers included women who had been waiting for their applications to be processed. Basanti Das, a caregiver from Sonarpur, told the newspaper that she had earlier received a monthly allowance of Rs 1,500 under the Lakshmir Bhandar scheme. After being included in Annapurna Yojana following its rollout in June, she received an SMS confirming that Rs 3,000 had been credited to her account.
Das said the payment would help her during the festival. Shilpi Das, a homemaker from Tollygunge, was also among those receiving the benefit for the first time on Thursday. She said she had been concerned after not receiving the payment until the previous month and would use the allowance for necessary festive-season expenses.
Sayoni Karmakar, a student from Kudghat, also received the allowance on Panchami, months after submitting her application. She told the Times of India that she had remained hopeful that her application would be accepted.
The scale of the latest transfer highlights the administrative challenge of processing a welfare programme with applications running into crores. Officials said applications were scrutinised to identify eligible beneficiaries before the payments were released. The process has involved both online and offline submissions, followed by verification and approval.
With the latest additions, the state government’s stated beneficiary base for Annapurna Yojana has reached approximately 1.6 crore women. The remaining applications that are still under process will determine whether the beneficiary count changes further after the current round of transfers.
