Day after adding to Gruha Lakshmi confusion, minister clarifies son being taxpayer won’t exclude woman from scheme

BENGALURU: A day after stating that a woman, whose son is a taxpayer, will not be eligible for the Gruha Lakshmi scheme, Women and Child Development Minister Lakshmi Hebbalkar on Friday clarified that it is limited to only women or their husbands who pay taxes for file for GST returns.

With confusion prevailing over eligibility for the Gruha Lakshmi scheme, the minister clarified that a woman, whose son is a taxpayer, will still be eligible for the scheme.

Lakshmi Hebbalkar also clarified that the form to apply for the scheme, which has been doing the rounds on social media, is in fact the actual one, but a few changes are being made to exclude the requirement for a copy of the bank passbook, changing the caste column to category and to provide more space for the name and address column.

To a query on whether the BPL ration cards should specifically mention the woman head of family, she said 95 per cent of BPL and APL cards already show the woman as head of the family. Earlier, the minister had said that the Gruha Lakshmi scheme will benefit 85 per cent of women in the state.

Minister Lakshmi Hebbalkar’s brother and MLC Channaraj Hattiholi initially tried to stop the media from meeting the minister and spoke arrogantly.

Meanwhile, in a show of arrogance, Minister Lakshmi Hebbalkar’s brother and MLC Channaraj Hattiholi, who was seen ruling the roost at her office at Vidhana Soudha on Friday, tried to stop media persons from meeting the minister.

In a show of arrogance, the MLC directed media persons, who were seeking clarity on the Gruha Lakshmi scheme, out of the minister’s chamber even as Lakshmi Hebbalkar looked on. Later on, Lakshmi Hebbalkar apologised to the media persons for her brother’s behaviour.