Mumbai: At least 14,298 men fraudulently enrolled in Maharashtra's Ladki Bahin Yojana and received monetary assistance intended solely for economically backward women, an internal audit by the state’s Women and Child Development (WCD) Department has revealed.

Launched last year ahead of the 2024 Assembly elections, the scheme offers Rs 1,500 a month to women aged 21–65 whose families earn less than Rs 2.5 lakh annually.

The programme was a key electoral plank for the BJP-led Mahayuti alliance, which includes the Shiv Sena (Shinde faction) and the NCP (Ajit Pawar faction).

Ten months after the scheme’s rollout, the audit has uncovered that these men exploited the online registration system by posing as female applicants, resulting in an erroneous disbursal of Rs 21.44 crore, reported NDTV.

“Ladki Bahin scheme was launched to help poor women. There is absolutely no reason why men should be its beneficiaries. We will recover the money given to them. If they do not cooperate, further action will be taken,” Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar said, according to the report.

But this revelation is just one of many irregularities that have come to light. According to the WCD Department, the scheme may have suffered losses totalling Rs 1,640 crore in its first year due to large-scale enrolment of ineligible applicants.

The costliest violation involved over 7.97 lakh women who enrolled as third members from families that already had two recipients.

The scheme clearly limits support to two women per household, but this clause was bypassed, leading to an estimated Rs 1,196 crore loss.

Another Rs 431.7 crore is believed to have been wrongly spent on 2.87 lakh beneficiaries who were above the scheme’s maximum eligible age of 65.

Moreover, 1.62 lakh women from families owning four-wheelers — a disqualifying criterion under the scheme — were also found among those receiving benefits.

The findings have triggered demands for deeper investigation, particularly into the registration process and the role of the technology provider.

"How did these men fill the forms? Who helped them? Which company was given the contract for registrations? There's a bigger conspiracy behind this. The company should be investigated, and the matter should be probed by an SIT or the ED," said NCP MP Supriya Sule.

In December 2024, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis had ordered a detailed review of the scheme.

The WCD Minister Aditi Tatkare announced in January this year that corrective measures would follow, and by February, the names of five lakh ineligible beneficiaries were removed from the database.

“The Department of Women and Child Development had sought information from all government departments to verify the eligibility of all applications. Accordingly, the Information and Technology Department reported that approximately 26.34 lakh beneficiaries, despite being ineligible, were availing benefits of the scheme. It has been found that some beneficiaries were availing the benefits of multiple schemes, some families had more than two beneficiaries, and in some cases, men had applied for the scheme.

"Based on this information, starting from June 2025, the benefits for these 26.34 lakh applicants have been temporarily suspended. Additionally, approximately 2.25 crore eligible beneficiaries of the scheme have been disbursed the honorarium for the month of June 2025,” WCD Minister Aditi Tatkare said.

While the government has initiated action to weed out ineligible names, the scale of irregularities has raised questions about the robustness of the enrolment system and the checks in place — especially for a scheme that formed the centrepiece of the coalition’s welfare narrative ahead of elections.