Overview
- The government has enrolled 28,25,769 verified women into the scheme’s first phase and has started transferring Rs 3,000 per month to those accounts.
- Officials will keep accepting fresh applications and plan to complete verification for additional beneficiaries over the next three months.
- A new online portal and local offices in districts, blocks and municipalities will manage enrolment, verification and payments for the scheme.
- Annapurna replaces the TMC-era Lakshmir Bhandar programme and changes the scale and per-person benefit compared with the earlier scheme that covered about 2.42 crore women at up to Rs 1,500 a month.
- The state government will issue public briefings every seven days to report numbers of verified beneficiaries, newly enrolled recipients and the pace of transfers.