AAP govt expected to announce Rs 1,000 per month to 1 crore women in Budget today
While the long overdue promise made by the AAP government to give Rs 1,000 per month to all women is to be fulfilled in this Budget, the government, in order to woo the Dalits, is mulling giving an additional honorarium to their women
The state’s Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government is all set to woo two major sections of voters — women and Dalits — as it presents the last Budget of this government on Sunday.
While the long overdue promise made by the AAP government to give Rs 1,000 per month to all women is to be fulfilled in this Budget, the government, in order to woo the Dalits, is mulling giving an additional honorarium to their women.
As Finance Minister Harpal Cheema presents his Budget proposals for 2026-17, it remains to be seen how he circumvents the issue of the rising public debt while giving this sop to women voters of Punjab, who constitute 48 per cent of the total voters in the poll-bound state. It is likely that the money saved as power subsidy – Rs 4,500 crore – through the reduction in power tariff yesterday – will be used to fund the scheme. According to rough estimates, the government will require an outlay of Rs 1,000 crore-1,300 crore per month for this scheme.
The revenue earned from the sale of properties by the urban development authorities, especially in Mohali (around Rs 3,000 crore), will also go towards funding this initiative. The AAP's political strategists and pollsters believe that this will help them consolidate a large chunk of voters in their favour. With Dalits comprising nearly 33 per cent of the voters, an additional sop to Dalit women by the ruling government, in the run-up to the next Assembly elections, would also help them garner a larger portion of the Dalit votes. In the 2022 elections, the AAP had got the major chunk of Dalit votes, as the latter broke away from their traditional loyalties towards the Congress and SAD.
However, the real challenge before Finance Minister Harpal Cheema will be to control the state’s "burgeoning-at-the-seams" public debt, which has crossed the Rs 4 lakh-crore mark in January. Though Cheema recently insisted that the state’s debt to GSDP ratio has actually gone down by almost 4 per cent, the Opposition benches are preparing to grill him on the Rs 1.19 lakh-crore public debt that has been added during the four years of the AAP rule.
The total Budget size is expected to increase by over 5 per cent for the coming fiscal of 2026-27. The allocations for Health sector, including for the flagship Mukh Mantri Sehat Bima Yojana, public education sector, PWD, Irrigation and Agriculture, amongst others, are expected to increase in this election year. The AAP government will also be patting its back in the Budget for meeting its fiscal targets during the ongoing financial year; trying to bring down the revenue deficit from the targeted Rs 23,957.28 crore for the entire fiscal to Rs 16,609.98 crore till January; and, surpassing the targets for non-tax revenue collections.
The government is likely to blame the Centre’s ruling party BJP for not releasing the state’s pending dues of Rs 8,800 crore as Rural Development Fund and the rather slow grants-in-aid from the Centre. Only 33.88 per cent of the targeted grants–in–aid have been received by the state in 10 months — between April 2025 and January 2026.
