Chennai: The DMK government grandiose scheme to pay women heads of households a monthly amount Rs1000, which was kick started by Chief Minister M K Stalin on Friday, came in for severe criticism from the leader of the opposition Edappadi K Palaniswami, who told the ruling party not to dream of getting people’s vote for the scheme.
Elated by the launch of the scheme, Stalin, however, put out a message in X thanking all those who were involved in the arduous exercise of identifying the over one crore beneficiaries of the scheme. Starting from the village officers to the Chief Secretaries of the government, all those who were part of the process found a mention in Stalin’s message.
He also congratulated and thanked the volunteers, members of the self-help groups, ration shop workers, employees of municipalities and corporations and TANGEDCO staff for the excellent work that also saw several women beneficiaries expressing happiness and many experts praising the scheme itself.
However, Palainiswami said that the scheme had been implemented late by 28 months, thus depriving the beneficiaries of the money for such a long time though the government came to power by making a promise of introducing the scheme.
Also he decried the conditions that were imposed on selecting the beneficiaries that left out half of the women who were expecting to get the money by believing in the election promises of the DMK.
Palaniswami said that the DMK government had hurriedly implemented it now after 28 months only because of the Lok Sabha elections that were expected to come in 2024 and debunked the government’s claim that with the implementation of the present scheme the election promises had been fulfilled cent percent.
