Mumbai, Aug 19 (IANS): The Maharashtra government will need Rs 4.60 lakh crore for the next five years to pay a monthly financial assistance of Rs 3,000 up from the present Rs 1,500 to over two crore eligible women under the ambitious Mukhyamantri Majhi Ladki Bahin Yojana.

These estimates have been made internally by the MahaYuti government after Chief Minister Eknath Shinde's formal launching of the Ladki Bahin scheme on Saturday in Pune He announced that if voted to power after the upcoming Assembly election the government will increase the financial aid to Rs 3,000 per month. He did not stop there but asked the two Deputy Chief Ministers, Devendra Fadnavis and Ajit Pawar (present finance and planning minister), to work out its matrix.

In the run-up to the upcoming Assembly election, Dy CM Ajit Pawar during the presentation of the annual budget for 2024-25 announced a slew of welfare and development schemes, including the Ladki Bahin scheme costing nearly Rs 1 lakh crore. He has also made a provision of Rs 46,000 crore for the Ladki Bahin scheme for the year 2024-25. If the government decides to increase the financial aid to Rs 3,000 per month, the government will have to bear a burden of Rs 92,000 crore annually alone on its implementation for the next five years.

CM Shinde’s announcement and the subsequent state government’s burden need to be seen in the present context of the government’s fiscal deficit, estimated at Rs 1.10 lakh crore and a revenue deficit of Rs 20,051 crore in 2024-25. Besides, the state’s public debt is expected to surge to Rs a record Rs 7.82 lakh crore in 2024-25 from Rs 7.11 lakh crore in 2023-24.

The opposition has claimed that the state government’s additional outgo will put pressure on state finances and there is every possibility that the fiscal deficit, which is estimated at 2.6 per cent in 2024-25, may cross the 3 per cent limit of Gross State Domestic Product. As per the revised estimates, in 2023-24, the fiscal deficit of the state is expected to be 2.8 per cent of the GSDP. This is higher than the budget estimate (2.5 per cent). Fiscal deficit is projected to be lowered to 2.3 per cent of GSDP by 2026-27.

However, a finance department officer said that the government is making efforts to keep the fiscal deficit within the 3 per cent GSDP limit. He added that the government is quite bullish over proposed estimates of the state's own tax revenue of Rs 3,35,811 crore in 2024-25. Of this, the state GST is expected to be the largest source with a collection of Rs 1,55,756 crore.

According to the officer, Maharashtra’s GSDP for 2024-25 (at current prices) is projected to be Rs 42,67,771 crore, amounting to a growth of 5.5 per cent over 2023-24 revised estimates.

A MahaYuti Minister strongly defended the CM’s announcement of hiking the monthly financial aid to Rs 3,000 saying that it is the government’s welfare economy. "The opposition and critics may criticise the expenses on the Ladki Bahin and other schemes but the government is of the view that the payment of financial assistance will increase consumption and thereby the money will come back to the economy. It will further boost the growth,’’ he argued.

(Sanjay Jog can be contacted at sanjay.j@ians.in_