Mothers whose sons pay taxes will still be eligible for the Gruha Lakshmi scheme, Minister Laxmi Hebbalkar said on Friday reversing her standpoint from earlier.
On Thursday, she said the government will not consider women whose sons pay taxes.
Speaking to mediapersons Friday, she said she wanted to clarify that sons paying taxes will not impact the eligibility of mothers for the Rs 2,000 per month scheme.
While there is much confusion over who the "woman head of the family" will be, the minister also said there was no scope for conflict as in 90% of cases, BPL and APL cards are issued in the name of women. Since these cards are in the name of women, they will be automatically eligible for the benefit, she said.
Sources in the Food and Civil Supplies Department backed this saying that as per the Union Government's norms, they were required to issue cards in the name of women. "Majority of the BPL and APL cards are in women's names. In some cases where it is in the old format and in a man's name, we will rectify it as and when we update the e-KYC details," sources explained.
She also added that the Gruha Lakshmi application will be finalised soon. While a purported application form has gone viral, the minister said the form was authentic but it was still in the draft format. "We are making some tweaks to it. We will finalise it soon," she said.
Meanwhile, after a joint meeting with officials of both the revenue and women and child welfare department here, Revenue Minister Krishna Byre Gowda told reporters that the revenue department will work along with the Women and Child Welfare department to execute ‘Gruha Lakshmi’ scheme effectively in the state.
"We are anticipating around around 1.3 crore applications under this scheme. Women and Child Development department does not have required expertise of handling processing scheme of such magnitude, whereas Revenue department has the expertise of handling such schemes, as department is responsible of disbursing various pension schemes under its belt," Gowda explained and added that the department will soon come out with mobile and online application to enable people to submit their applications.
Cong MLC snubs journos
Minister Lakshmi Hebbalkar's MLC-brother Channaraj Hattiholi got into an argument with mediapersons at Vidhana Soudha on Friday. When mediapersons went to meet Hebbalkar in her office, Hattiholi allegedly snubbed them for entering without permission. Reporters in turn questioned what the MLC was doing in the minister's office. Hebbalkar later apologised to the media.