Delhi Elections Flip Into ‘Sop Opera’, However Whose Freebie Guarantees Will Voters Belief? – News18
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The ladies’s allowance scheme to be rolled out in Delhi, by whichever social gathering wins these elections, will practically double the town’s subsidy invoice to Rs 22,000 crore yearly
The following 15 days will see folks, and particularly girls, weigh the guarantees of AAP, BJP, and Congress and vote accordingly on February 5. (Representational picture: News18)
With 15 days to go earlier than votes are solid, the Delhi elections have began a warfare of freebies. The Aam Aadmi Social gathering, the BJP, and the Congress are going all out to woo the voters with monetary advantages and subsidies.
The Aam Aadmi Social gathering is giving 200 items of free electrical energy and 20,000 litres of free water a month to home shoppers, free bus rides for girls, and has promised Rs 2,100 a month for girls whether it is in energy once more. It has additionally promised free electrical energy and water for these staying on lease.
The Congress has promised Rs 2,500 a month for girls and 300 items of free energy, however it’s a small participant within the Delhi polls.
The massive counter actually has come from the Bharatiya Janata Social gathering, which has promised Rs 2,500 to girls each month and gasoline cylinders at Rs 500. The social gathering can be anticipated to announce sure items of free energy and free water. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has promised that no current public welfare scheme in Delhi will probably be stopped.
Freebies have decided the end result of the Delhi elections in a giant approach, each in 2015 and 2020, when AAP received with large mandates on the again of its sops. However this time, the BJP is posing a robust problem with counter-freebies. The massive query is, who will the folks of Delhi imagine in now?
We are going to come to that simply in a bit. First, allow us to take a look at the burden of the freebies on the exchequer.
An estimated Rs 11,000 crore is spent on subsidies in Delhi yearly, like free electrical energy, free water, and free bus rides for girls. The ladies’s allowance scheme to be rolled out in Delhi, by whichever social gathering wins these elections, will practically double the town’s subsidy invoice to Rs 22,000 crore yearly.
Delhi has for lengthy not been a revenue-deficit state however is poised to turn into one given the rising freebie invoice.
However Delhi just isn’t the one area that’s getting weighed down below the rising invoice of month-to-month payouts to girls, which is turning into an ordinary ballot promise throughout India.
Let’s discuss some historical past.
It began in West Bengal in 2021, when Mamata Banerjee first introduced the Lakshmir Bhandar scheme for girls. Presently, Rs 1,000-Rs 1,200 per thirty days is given to girls below it. The scheme has had a deep influence on the Trinamool Congress’s ballot successes in West Bengal.
The Congress took a leaf out of Mamata Banerjee’s guide to vow Rs 1,500 per thirty days for girls throughout the 2022 Himachal Pradesh elections and received the state.
In 2023, the BJP jumped onto the bandwagon with the then chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, Shivraj Singh Chouhan, rolling out the Ladli Behna Yojana, below which Rs 1,250 per thirty days is given to girls. This scheme was seen as a significant motive for the BJP’s thumping win in Madhya Pradesh.
In the identical 12 months, the Gruha Lakshmi scheme was launched by the Congress authorities in Karnataka with a month-to-month help of Rs 2,000 for girls, once more a promise that introduced it to energy within the elections.
2024 noticed a flurry of states launch comparable schemes.
Chhattisgarh rolled out the Mahtari Vandana Yojana with Rs 1,000 per thirty days for girls after a ballot promise by the BJP that gave it a win.
The Congress promised the Maha Lakshmi Scheme with Rs 2,500 a month for girls within the Telangana elections and received the state.
The JMM authorities in Jharkhand began the Maiya Samman Yojana in 2024 earlier than the elections, providing Rs 1,000 month-to-month help to girls, and was victorious.
Lastly, the BJP in Maharashtra rolled out its girls scheme at Rs 1,500 per thirty days and received the latest elections with an enormous majority.
So all events have realised the profitable mantra—a financial scheme for girls, as they’re a significant vote financial institution.
Now, the large query: whose guarantees will work in Delhi?
In previous elections, what has been seen is that the first-mover benefit is vital with regards to providing girls’s schemes. Whichever social gathering may give the cash first will get the pole place, in comparison with the social gathering promising it. Meaning the incumbent social gathering invariably has a bonus.
We’ve got seen this each in Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra, the place the BJP authorities despatched some instalments of the cash to the financial institution accounts of ladies earlier than elections and received the polls as girls trusted that social gathering extra whose authorities was already giving the cash.
In rural areas of the nation the place girls have invariably been depending on the lads within the household for cash to run the family, the cash coming straight into their financial institution accounts is a significant empowering instrument that offers them monetary independence.
Throughout our travels in earlier elections, girls instructed us tales of how that they had purchased sarees for themselves and garments or books for his or her kids out of this cash. There was additionally a terror that if the social gathering giving the cash goes out of energy, the scheme might cease. This was regardless of the opposite social gathering additionally providing an identical scheme.
The state of affairs in Delhi is, nonetheless, considerably completely different. In a metropolis that has seen an enormous rollout of freebies by the AAP authorities, the ladies’s scheme couldn’t be launched by the social gathering earlier than these Delhi elections. Additionally, in Punjab, the AAP authorities has not been capable of ship the ladies’s scheme it promised throughout the meeting elections.
The arrest of Arvind Kejriwal within the alleged liquor rip-off derailed the rollout of the ladies’s scheme in Delhi, although Rs 2,000 crore was allotted for the scheme in final 12 months’s Delhi finances. As soon as Arvind Kejriwal got here out on bail, he resigned because the chief minister, additional delaying the rollout of the scheme.
The Delhi cupboard lastly permitted the scheme final month, with Arvind Kejriwal promising Rs 2,100 a month for girls if his social gathering involves energy once more. However the truth stays that no lady in Delhi has received the cash to this point.
Now, the BJP has upped the stakes, saying it would pay Rs 2,500 per thirty days to girls if it involves energy in Delhi after a niche of 27 years.
So whereas AAP is asking folks to belief its earlier document of freebie supply and says it ensures the Rs 2,100 rollout for girls after elections, the BJP is promising a better quantity of Rs 2,500, citing its document of delivering the promise in Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra.
Within the subsequent 15 days, folks, particularly girls, will weigh the guarantees of AAP, BJP, and Congress and vote accordingly on February 5. Delhiites are holding their playing cards near the chest.
