Congress Parliamentary Party (CPP) chief Sonia Gandhi expressed serious concern over the severe lack of funding for the Narendra Modi government’s flagship scheme for pregnant women, the Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana (PMMVY). She raised the matter in the Rajya Sabha despite this underfunding to claim that the fall in benefits reaching eligible women had been steep.
Gandhi highlighted that the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana was a continuation of welfare schemes like the National Food Security Act (NFSA) passed in 2013 when then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh led the country. Essential food grains are now provided to around 81 crore beneficiaries by PMGKY. The menstrual income support scheme added ₹6,000 per child as maternity benefits, and as a part of NFSA, pregnant women in the informal sector were also entitled to ₹6,000 per child. To fulfil this commitment, the PMMVY was launched in 2017 to provide ₹5,000 to the first child, and with the addition of two girls only if the second is a girl, after that, everything is covered.
Referring to an analysis, Sonia Gandhi said that during the financial year (2022-23), more than 68 per cent of eligible women received atleast one instalment of the benefit during their first birth. In the very next year, though, this number collapsed to 12%. She wanted to ask the Union government why this happened at all.
She also questioned the transparency in the monies allocated for PMMVY. On the other end, Sonia Gandhi noted that the maternity benefit provision in NFSA would only be fully implemented if it was made with a budget of ₹12,000 crore per year. However, the budget documents do not have a separate PMMVY reference. The scheme, instead, is put under Samarthya, a programme of the Ministry of Women and Child Development with a total allocation of ₹2,521 crore for 2025-26, showing a funding dearth clearly.
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