Lakshmir Bhandar: Almost all the applications from 12 dists cleared

Kolkata: The number of pending Lakshmir Bhandar applications has been brought down to almost zero in 12 districts in just 15 days time with special initiatives taken by the Bengal government.

There were around 80,000 applications that were awaiting sanctions on December 7 due to different document related issues. Knowing about the same at the administrative review meeting at Raiganj, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had given direction to take necessary steps to sanction the pending applications.

According to the sources in Nabanna, around 55,900 applications have been sanctioned after sorting out the issues in the past 15 days till December 21. Remaining only 24,100 applications would also be sanctioned soon with the initiatives taken by the state government. There are five districts including Alipurduar, Birbhum, North and South Dinajpur and Nadia where there is not a single pending case. Number of pending applications in Jhargram is only one and there are two each in Jalpaiguri, East and West Burdwan. There are only three, four and six pending cases in Murshidabad, Cooch Behar and Bankura respectively. There are more than 6,000 pending cases each in North and South 24-Parganas and it is above 8,000 in Kolkata.

Officers were being sent to the households of the applicants, those could not be sanctioned due to document related issues, and the same had been rectified besides collecting more necessary documents to ensure that sanction can be given to his or her applications. The entire exercise is going on under the supervision of block development officers (BDOs) and daily updates are being sent to the state secretariat, the officer said.

With the Women and Child Development and Social Welfare Department as the scheme's nodal agency, more than 1.64 crore women are getting benefited out of the Lakshmikr Bhandar scheme under which women from general category and SC/ST category started receiving Rs 500 and Rs 1000 per month respectively. Already the beneficiaries have received the same for the months of September, October, November and December. Each month the state government disburses around Rs 800 to ensure women empowerment through the scheme. With the sanction given to the pending applications, another around 60,000 more women would get benefitted from the next month. Duare Sarkar camps are going to be held again from January 2. It has been preliminary assessed that another three to four lakh beneficiaries would get added under the scheme with fresh applications to be received in the Duare Sarkar camps.