Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta during the inauguration of the AI-enabled Dust Portal 2.0 at Delhi Secretariat on Monday.
| Photo Credit: ANI
The Delhi government will launch its women’s financial assistance scheme, the ‘Delhi Lakshmi Yojana’, by the end of August, under which eligible women aged between 21 and 60 years will receive ₹2,500 a month, the Chief Minister’s Office (CMO) stated in an official release on Monday.Specifying the eligibility criteria for the scheme, the CMO said, “Only those women will be eligible who, or whose families, have been residents of Delhi for at least 10 years. Neither the beneficiary nor her family should have any criminal record. Within a family, only the eldest eligible woman will qualify for the scheme, and only one woman from each family will be entitled to receive the benefit. In addition, the family’s annual income must not exceed ₹2.5 lakh.”It added that women already receiving benefits under any government pension or other regular financial assistance scheme would not be eligible. Women from families owning a four-wheeler would also be excluded from the scheme.The government has set a target of launching the scheme around Raksha Bandhan, which will be celebrated on August 28, according to the CMO.The announcement came after Chief Minister Rekha Gupta chaired a high-level review meeting at the Delhi Secretariat.In a statement, the Chief Minister said the government’s objective was to provide every eligible woman with a “reliable foundation of financial security”, enabling her to play a stronger role in supporting her family and contributing to society.She said the government considered women’s empowerment to be a key pillar of good governance and remained committed to bringing positive change to the lives of lakhs of women through the scheme.Poll promiseThe scheme was one of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) key promises in the run-up to the 2025 Delhi Assembly election. In its manifesto, the party had promised to provide ₹2,500 a month to women from “poor families” under the scheme, then called the ‘Mahila Samriddhi Yojana’.During the election campaign, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said the scheme would be approved in the first Cabinet meeting of a BJP government and described it as “Modi ki guarantee”. He had also said women would start receiving the benefit by March 8, 2025.On March 8, 2025, the Delhi Cabinet approved the scheme and allocated ₹5,100 crore for it. However, it was not rolled out during the financial year. The allocation was later revised to ₹5,110 crore in the annual budget presented in March this year. Published - July 14, 2026 12:37 am IST
