About 80 lakh women have been found to be ineligible for Maharashtra’s Mukhyamantri Majhi Ladki Bahin scheme after a state-wide verification exercise, PTI reported on Monday.This has led to Opposition leaders alleging that the state government was reducing the number of beneficiaries owing to a financial crisis.The scheme, launched in June 2024, provides a monthly transfer of Rs 1,500 to women aged 21 to 65 whose families earn less than Rs 2.5 lakh per year. The number of beneficiaries of the scheme dropped from 2.4 crore to nearly 1.7 crore at the end of the April 30 deadline for them to complete an e-KYC, or Know Your Customer, process, PTI quoted an unidentified official as saying.The government had provided an eight-month window for the beneficiaries to complete the process, added the official.“Around 50 to 55 lakh women failed to complete the process entirely, while two to three lakh rectified errors during this period,” the official said, according to PTI. “Additionally, nearly 12 lakh women were found to be income-tax payers exceeding the annual income cap of Rs 2.5 lakh, and over 4.5 lakh had crossed the upper age limit of 65 years.”Another five lakh women were said to have been receiving benefits under the Namo Shetkari scheme, rendering them ineligible.The official denied that 80 lakh women were removed from the scheme only because they did not complete the e-KYC process, PTI reported.However, Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar) leader Jayant Patil alleged that the reduction in the number of beneficiaries was an indication of a “severe financial crisis” before the Union and state governments.“Today, 80 lakh women have been declared ineligible,” Patil remarked in a social media post on Monday. “It would not come as much of a surprise, if subsequently, some more women are declared ineligible for some or the other reason and the scheme is slowly shut down.”The party’s Working President Supriya Sule noted that while official statements had suggested the number of beneficiaries had peaked at around 2.46 crore to 2.48 crore, the figure gradually went down after e-KYC was made mandatory.Sule demanded that a high-level inquiry committee be set up to look into the matter, and that an independent economic and administrative audit be conducted into how beneficiaries were identified and whether public funds were utilised properly.लाडकी बहीण योजनेअंतर्गत सुरुवातीला २.३८ कोटी महिलांना लाभ दिल्याचा दावा राज्य सरकारकडून करण्यात आला होता. डिसेंबर २०२४ पर्यंत या महिलांना तब्बल ₹१७ हजार ५०५ कोटींपेक्षा अधिक रक्कम वितरित झाल्याची माहिती देखील देण्यात आली. पुढे या योजनेअंतर्गत लाभार्थी संख्या २.४६ ते २.४८… pic.twitter.com/iYMvVbzPme— Supriya Sule (@supriya_sule) June 1, 2026