HARYANA CHIEF MINISTER Nayab Singh Saini’s announcement Thursday of monthly assistance of Rs 2,100 for women comes as a signal of one-upmanship to the neighbouring Punjab administration under Bhagwant Mann.
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government under Mann has been in power for over three years in Punjab, but it has not been able to implement its core election promise of delivering Rs 1,000 to women each month.
Saini’s rolling out of the Rs 2,100 allotment Thursday, in the name of Lado Lakshmi Yojana, has given BJP leaders in Haryana and Punjab a direct point of attack on the AAP and other parties unable to fulfill their key promises. Given the close connection of Punjab and Haryana, the BJP believes Saini’s implementation of the scheme could be a potent attack on the reputation of the Mann government.
And this was evident in Saini’s speech.
“With today’s announcement, the BJP has fulfilled another promise from our Sankalp Patra (its manifesto),” Saini said before hitting out at the AAP and other Congress-ruled states such as Karnataka, Telangana, and Himachal Pradesh.
Saini added that “the BJP’s consistent delivery on promises” was in sharp contrast to the “Congress guarantees”, which are “nothing but Chinese goods, with no assurance or reliability”.
“People of Punjab have lost faith in the AAP government, just as they did with Congress earlier,” Saini said. The AAP’s governance model, Saini added, is a failure “in will, intent, and policy.”
“The Congress and the AAP actually eat from the same plate and this is why the people have lost faith in them… While the (Centre’s) Ayushman Yojana in Haryana provides health insurance benefits of up to Rs five lakh, the people of Punjab are deprived of this facility.” Mann said.
He then pointed out that “Haryana procures 100% of crops” at Minimum Support Price (MSP) and offers Ayushman Bharat health coverage of up to Rs 5 lakh.
These could be direct responses to the Mann government’s action on the Punjab BJP unit, including detentions, for holding camps in rural belts as part of a campaign to raise awareness of Central schemes that have allegedly been curtailed in the state.
The BJP has also been hitting out at Mann over the monthly assistance promise to women. Mann reiterated the announcement in the run up to Lok Sabha elections last year, even claiming that the file regarding the promise was “lying on his table and was waiting to be signed” as soon as the code of conduct would be lifted.
In October 2024, Mann said he would raise the allowance for women to Rs 1,100 per month — explicitly calling it the “next mission” of his administration. But the decision remains in limbo owing to its finances. In the Lok Sabha this March, the Union Minister of State for Finance, Pankaj Chaudhary, had mentioned that Punjab was the second-most indebted state in the country in terms of debt to gross state domestic product (GSDP) ratio.
As the Mann government faces heat from multiple fronts, the BJP unit seems to be devising a strategy to reach out to the Sikh leadership and send a signal to the community ahead of the Punjab elections in 2027.
Since January 2025, Saini had been regularly paying respects at Gurudwara Nada Sahib in Panchkula, participating in religious ceremonies and extending government support to the Haryana Sikh Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee.
In the recently-concluded monsoon session of Haryana Vidhan Sabha, Saini announced priority government jobs for 121 Haryana families affected by the 1984 anti-Sikh riots.
Saini ended his speech Thursday by expressing concern over the flood situation in Punjab. Saying that Haryana is ready to send relief materials, medical aid, and rescue teams to the state, he added: “Wherever Bhagwant Mann says, Haryana will provide timely assistance to help flood victims”.