Odisha to release 3rd phase Subhadra money by Nov-end, change norms to expand coverage

Bhubaneswar: Odisha government will disburse money in third phase of first instalment under Subhadra Yojana by the end of November, Deputy Chief Minister Pravati Parida informed this on Saturday. “We are planning to provide assistance to around 20 lakh beneficiaries in the third phase this month. The fourth and final phase of the first instalment would be released by the end of December,” she said.

The government is also set to rework the guidelines for Subhadra Yojana to expand its coverage and reassess the applications rejected on various grounds. While 60.27 lakh women beneficiaries have received the first instalment of Rs5,000 under the scheme, 2.67 lakh applications were rejected during scrutiny as the applicants did not fall in the criteria fixed for the financial assistance.

The government has decided to extend the benefits under Subhadra to anganwadi workers, who are in the database of government employees. As per the previous guidelines of the Subhadra Yojana, government employees are not eligible for the scheme. Of around 1.25 lakh anganwadi workers, nearly 25,000 may have a government employee in their family. But the rest would be included under the scheme, she said.

Sources said thousands of applications have been rejected on the account of land area, family owning a fourwheeler and one of the family members being a government employee. Families with more than five acre of irrigated land or 10 acre of non-irrigated land and four-wheeler cannot avail the scheme. However, owners of tractors, mini-trucks, small commercial vehicles and other similar light goods vehicles are being considered.

The government has decided to relook into these applications and find out if any has been rejected inadvertently. Deputy chief minister Pravati Parida said a high-level meeting was convened to discuss issues regarding the implementation of the scheme. “It has been decided to involve tehsildars to get the land records verified through the respective revenue inspectors and find out how many of the applicants
have the land area above the eligibility criteria. BDOs would be made nodal officers for the scheme,” she said.

With slight modifications, the Women and Child Development department would soon issue a detailed guideline for Subhadra Yojana for which the state government has made an outlay of Rs55,825 crore over five years. As per the food security scheme database, the state has 83 lakh women beneficiaries, aged 21-60 years having ration cards. The government has decided to extend Subhadra to around 1.08 crore women.