Bengaluru, Nov 5 — BJP MP Tejasvi Surya on Thursday criticised the Congress government in Karnataka over the non-payment of two months' instalments in 2025 under the Gruha Lakshmi scheme, alleging that the government's explanation in the High Court contradicted its earlier claim that technical glitches had delayed payments.
Taking to the social media platform X, Surya, the Bengaluru South MP, pointed out that in December 2025, the then Women and Child Welfare Minister Laxmi Hebbalkar had blamed technical glitches for the delay in releasing Gruha Lakshmi funds on the floor of the Legislative Assembly. However, in November 2026, the same government had cited financial constraints before the High Court to justify the non-payment.
“In December 2025, then Minister for Women and Child Welfare Laxmi Hebbalkar blamed, on the Assembly floor, technical glitches for unpaid Gruha Lakshmi dues. In November 2026, her own Government cites 'financial constraints' in court, contradicting her statement. Servers never crashed. The State's finances did! Need more proofs that this is a zero-balance, Pauper Sarkara!?” he posted.
Surya also shared the statement of objections filed by the state government before the High Court in response to a petition filed by R. Ganga and others challenging the non-payment of Gruha Lakshmi instalments. The Principal Secretary to the Government, Finance Department, Bengaluru, and others have been named as respondents in the case.
In its statement of objections, the government submitted that proposals for releasing the Gruha Lakshmi instalments for February and March 2025 had been forwarded to the Finance Department. However, the grants were not released due to financial constraints, resulting in the non-payment of assistance for those two months.
The government further contended that the petitioners were themselves beneficiaries of the scheme and had approached the court in the nature of public interest litigation to champion the cause of nearly 1.24 crore enrolled beneficiaries.
Defending the scheme's implementation, the government submitted that Gruha Lakshmi was a benevolent programme launched to empower women by providing financial assistance to the female heads of households. However, it argued that its implementation depended on administrative exigencies and that beneficiaries could not claim the assistance as an enforceable legal right.
The state government also maintained that the existence of a welfare scheme did not automatically confer an indefeasible right on beneficiaries to demand financial assistance based on the doctrine of legitimate expectation, particularly when the government was unable to release funds due to genuine financial constraints.
On these grounds, the government sought dismissal of the writ petition, arguing that financial assistance under a benevolent scheme could not be claimed as a matter of right or enforced solely through judicial intervention.
The controversy comes against the backdrop of a heated Assembly debate in 2025, when the BJP had accused the government of misleading the House over pending Gruha Lakshmi payments.
The then Minister Laxmi Hebbalkar had apologised in the Assembly for providing an incorrect reply on the disbursal of funds. She admitted that two months' instalments had not been credited to beneficiaries through Direct Benefit Transfer, while maintaining that the scheme was being implemented sincerely.
She had expressed regret if her earlier reply hurt members of the House. The admission followed allegations by BJP legislators that payments for February and March were pending, contrary to claims that instalments had been cleared until August.
The Gruha Lakshmi scheme, one of the Congress government's five pre-poll guarantees, provides Rs 2,000 per month to women heads of families and has around 1.24 crore enrolled beneficiaries.