BENGALURU: Two beneficiaries of the ‘Gruha Lakshmi’ guarantee scheme have moved the Karnataka High Court, seeking directions to the state government to release the arrears for February and March of 2025.
The petitioners pointed out that the amounts were not released despite Women and Child Development Minister Laxmi Hebbalkar admitting on the floor of the Legislative Assembly that payments had not been disbursed.
A vacation division bench of Justices Suraj Govindaraj and K Manmadha Rao on Thursday issued notice to the principal secretaries of the Finance Department, Panchayat Raj Department and Director of the Department of Women and Child Development, and posted the matter to June 4 to allow the state to file its response.
The court was hearing the petition filed by R Ganga and G D Pavithra, residing in the city, seeking an urgent hearing for the release of the arrears, Rs 2,000 each per month, which is given to the woman head of each household.
The petitioners stated that the arrears remain unpaid despite budgetary allocation and continuation of the scheme for 2025-26. This caused severe hardship to women dependent on the scheme for basic household expenses and livelihood, they stated. They requested the court to issue directions to the state to keep the money in an escrow account during the pendency of the petition.
The arrears amounted to Rs 5,000 crore. The root cause of the lapse lies in the decision taken in February to route payments under the scheme through taluk panchayats by way of Direct Benefit Transfer instead of through the Department of Women and Child Development. This transition delayed the payments, but the finance department did not carry forward the amount into the new financial year, resulting in the lapse of those instalments, the petitioners added.
The nonpayment has affected around 1.20 crore beneficiaries across the state, the petitioners alleged. Administrative lapses and failure to disburse the statutory benefits are a violation of the fundamental rights of beneficiaries guaranteed under Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution, they argued.
