More than 37 lakh women across Punjab woke up to a direct credit in their bank accounts on Sunday, 1 November 2026 — as Chief Minister Bhagwant Singh Mann released the next installment of the Mukhmantri Mawan-Dhiyan Satkar Yojana at a state event in Abohar, pushing Rs 1,291.09 crore simultaneously into 37,43,168 individual accounts.

What the Abohar event delivered

Standing at Abohar in Fazilka district, CM Mann formally released the installment at a programme convened specifically under the scheme. The Chief Minister's Office confirmed that Rs 1,291.09 crore is being credited across the state in a single tranche — one of the largest single-day direct-benefit transfers under this women-centric programme. The scheme, whose Punjabi name translates broadly as the Mukhmantri Mawan-Dhiyan Satkar Yojana ('Chief Minister Mothers-Daughters Respect Scheme'), is designed to route periodic cash support directly to eligible women, bypassing intermediaries.

The scheme's roots in AAP's Punjab project

The Aam Aadmi Party government, which swept Punjab in March 2022 under Bhagwant Singh Mann, launched the scheme as part of a broader commitment to women's financial inclusion — mirroring the direct-transfer model AAP had road-tested in Delhi. The logic is straightforward: put money directly in the hands of mothers and daughters, with no bureaucratic filter between the government and the beneficiary. That approach has become a signature of AAP-governed states and has since been replicated in various forms by other state governments chasing the same financial-inclusion dividend.

37 lakh beneficiaries — and why the scale matters

A beneficiary count of 37,43,168 women represents a substantial share of Punjab's adult female population, signalling near-saturation reach within the eligible category. At Rs 1,291.09 crore per installment, the cumulative fiscal commitment across all tranches runs into several thousand crore rupees — a number that will feature prominently when the Punjab government frames its next budget session. Each fresh installment also serves as a live stress-test of the state's direct-benefit-transfer infrastructure: whether bank accounts are seeded, whether payments clear without rejections, and whether the last-mile delivery actually reaches rural women in districts like Fazilka.

What the next installment signals

The release at Abohar — a town in the cotton-growing southwest of Punjab — is not incidental. Holding the event in a region with strong agricultural roots and a dense rural female population is a visible statement about where the scheme's weight falls. Observers will watch subsequent installments to see whether the beneficiary count grows, whether the per-beneficiary transfer amount shifts, and how the scheme figures in pre-budget announcements from Chandigarh.

For the women whose accounts just received a credit, the arithmetic is simple. For the government, each tranche is a proof point — and a political one — that the promise made in 2022 is still being kept.