The Chief Minister's Office of Karnataka on Friday, 19 June 2026 announced that Chief Minister D K Shivakumar chaired a review meeting on the state's flagship guarantee schemes at the Vidhana Soudha committee room in Bengaluru, issuing a sweeping set of directives to protect eligible beneficiaries while cutting off ineligible ones.

Context

The meeting was convened to audit the implementation of Karnataka's five guarantee schemes — Gruha Lakshmi, Gruha Jyothi, Shakti, and Anna Bhagya — which were launched after the Congress party formed government in May 2023. The Chief Minister's directives, shared in Kannada by the official CMO account, stated: 'ಅರ್ಹ ಫಲಾನುಭವಿಗಳ ಹಿತಕಾಯುವ ಜೊತೆಗೆ ಅನರ್ಹರನ್ನು ಯೋಜನೆಯಿಂದ ಹೊರಗಿಡಬೇಕು' ('protect eligible beneficiaries while excluding the ineligible from the schemes').

The review follows an Accountant General (AG) report that flagged serious irregularities, including multiple beneficiaries receiving Gruha Lakshmi funds into a single bank account and single individuals registering multiple accounts. The AG report noted that three lakh instalments totalling Rs 60 crore had flowed through such irregular channels.

Policy Backdrop

The Gruha Lakshmi scheme transfers monthly cash to women heads of households via Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) linked to Aadhaar-seeded bank accounts. Shivakumar highlighted that many legitimate beneficiaries had switched bank accounts because Gruha Lakshmi funds were being automatically adjusted against outstanding loan balances in their original accounts — a situation the government said must not penalise genuine recipients.

The Chief Minister also pointed to a systemic gap: precautions taken during the rollout of Gruha Jyothi — the free-electricity-up-to-200-units scheme — had successfully curbed misuse, but similar vigilance was not uniformly applied to other schemes. He directed officials to replicate that framework across all guarantees going forward.

On the Shakti free women's bus travel scheme, the meeting noted that women had made 763 crore journeys up to the end of May, with a ticket value of Rs 20,047.69 crore — figures the Chief Minister described as a mark of the scheme's success. For 2026-27, the government plans to distribute 10 lakh free bus passes to students across general, Scheduled Caste, and Scheduled Tribe categories.

Under Anna Bhagya, Rs 11,561.05 crore was transferred via DBT to beneficiaries between July 2023 and December 2024. Since February 2025, an additional 5 kg of rice per month is being distributed to 4,44,67,942 beneficiaries — a scale the Chief Minister termed a 'historic achievement.' He also ordered strict action against the black-market sale of Anna Bhagya rice.

Stakeholders and Impact

Shivakumar identified several categories of misuse that must be stopped immediately: funds flowing to deceased beneficiaries, payments being credited to bank accounts registered in other states, and UPI accounts opened through Airtel App Bank being used fraudulently. He directed that Gruha Lakshmi transfers be restricted to accounts held within Karnataka, and that a voice message be sent to beneficiaries' mobile phones the moment funds are credited.

The Chief Minister was firm that voters not on the Karnataka electoral roll should not benefit from state schemes, and directed that during the upcoming special comprehensive voter-list revision, no genuine beneficiary's name should be dropped. He also called on well-off individuals who are currently enrolled to voluntarily relinquish their scheme benefits, and said such people should be publicly encouraged.

Officials were asked to address two major technical glitches in the Gruha Lakshmi delivery system and to take immediate steps to update records of deceased beneficiaries through e-KYC and to reactivate or close dormant NPCI-linked bank accounts. Gruha Jyothi had reached 1.65 crore beneficiaries by the end of May, and officials were told to identify and act against residents who had migrated from other states but were drawing Gruha Jyothi benefits.

What's Next

The directives set the stage for a tighter beneficiary-verification drive across all guarantee schemes, with the AG report's findings expected to guide corrective action in the near term. The rollout of 10 lakh student bus passes for 2026-27 and the continued monthly distribution of additional rice to over 4.44 crore beneficiaries will test the government's ability to scale delivery while simultaneously plugging leakages. The Chief Minister closed the meeting with a reminder that while the guarantee schemes exist to 'serve as a support for people's lives,' preventing their misuse is an equally binding duty of the government.