Bengal Unemployment Assistance Scheme queuing for cash

Standing in line has become an essential feature of democracy in India: for food rations, to register in a government scheme, to vote. In west bengalThe queues in front of local government offices are continuously increasing.

within a million days Residents standing in queues for Special Intensive Review (SIR), In an attempt to prove themselves as real voters, youth in West Bengal started standing in queues again from Sunday 15 February.

By 17 February the line became long. Thousands of people have gathered at the Banglar Yuba Sathi registration camp at Geetanjali Stadium in the eastern part of Kolkata. Anjali Shaw (25) is sorting out her documents at the registration camp. She says, “It would have been better if we had got jobs in return. Considering the condition of the job market, there is not much hope at the state and national level. But this money is a big help right now.” Anjali is a graduate and used to work in a private company, but lost her job.

On February 5, West Bengal Finance Minister Chandrima Bhattacharya presented the budget for the year 2026-27 in the state assembly. The budget was announced a few months before the West Bengal Assembly elections. New cash incentive for unemployed youth of West Bengalis called Bengali young friend.

“Under this scheme, people between 21 and 40 years of age, who have passed Madhyamik (Class 10), are unemployed, and are not covered under any social security scheme of the government other than educational benefits or scholarships, will be entitled to a monthly assistance of ₹1,500 until they get employment or for 5 years, whichever is earlier,” the Finance Minister said amid cheers from MLAs from the treasury bench in the state Assembly.

in line for money

Government sources say that on the very first day of the camp, about 2 lakh people filled the forms. The number of youth registering for the scheme by the end of a week is in lakhs. There are graduates, post graduates, even those with MBA degrees.

“My brother does ad-hoc work. Despite being a graduate, he has no regular income,” says Suman Mandal, who is helping his brother fill out the Yuva Sathi registration form at Geetanjali Stadium.

In the Mandal family, Suman’s wife and mother receive a monthly allowance of ₹1,500 each under the West Bengal Lakshmir Bhandar Scheme, a direct cash transfer social welfare scheme for women. They hope the cumulative ₹4,500 will help make life easier at home.

The state government has made an additional allocation of Rs 5,000 crore in the budget for the scheme. While the scheme was scheduled to start from August 15, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee directed that camps be set up across the state from mid-February and the first installment of cash under the scheme be deposited into accounts on April 1.

Some men and women and their parents also came to the registration center. “Who likes to stand in line to get benefits from the unemployment scheme? But this is the reality,” says a father waiting in line at another Youth Partner Center on behalf of his son.

Sampa Bhattacharya, mother of a 20-year-old college student standing in line, says, “Everyone in our locality is coming here to stand in lines and get their share in the scheme. I get the Lakshmir Bhandar, not my daughter. So, it is good for her.”

The registration camp of Banglar Yuva Sathi at Kashi Bose Lane in North Kolkata is located in a smaller space than Geetanjali Stadium, yet the numbers attending it are not commensurate with the space.

Along with the Yuva Sathi registration desk, the authorities have also set up a Lakshmir Bhandar registration camp. This is a cash incentive scheme for women below 60 years of age in West Bengal. Announcements are made over the loudspeaker that anyone who is “not yet registered with Lakshmir Bhandar” can “easily sign up at the local desk”. Women kept competing to get ahead in the line.

political moves

Local Trinamool Congress MLA and Industries and Women and Child Development Minister Shashi Panja has been visiting the camp regularly to ensure that people can register for unemployment allowance without any hassle.

Panja says, “Many people are saying this is a political move. But we are not forcing anyone to take it or register. It is voluntary. We have seen a huge response so far. Thousands of people are coming every day to register.”

Leader of Opposition in West Bengal Assembly Suvendu Adhikari described the scene of people queuing up for unemployment allowance as a “horrible scene” and said the Trinamool Congress government is not in favor of job creation.

The BJP leader said the new Banglar Yuba Sathi would meet the same fate as the Yuva Shree scheme launched in 2013 to provide allowances and jobs to 17 lakh applicants. The scheme has effectively ended as no funds have been allocated since the financial year 2017-18, the official said.

young fellow This is not the first cash incentive scheme launched by Trinamool Congress. Five years ago, before the 2021 assembly elections, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had announced the Lakshmir Bhandar Yojana.

In the Budget presented on February 5, 2026, Ms Bhattacharya increased the monthly allowance under the scheme by ₹500 per month. After the increase, now general category women will get Rs 1,500 per month and reserved category women will get Rs 1,700 per month.

Describing this scheme as the brainchild of Chief Minister Banerjee, he said that 2.42 crore women will be included in this scheme, which is almost half of the entire population of women in West Bengal. The increase in Lakshmi reserves will put an annual burden of Rs 15,000 crore on the state exchequer.

Economist Abhirup Sarkar says that economic development has different meanings for different classes of people. “For the poor and the underprivileged, this means two meals a day, adequate and clean water supply, painless travel on village roads, electricity, free education, easily accessible low-cost health services and, if possible, a house the family can call their own,” he says. These are seen as development. “Also, if there is a cash transfer, no matter how small, there is a sense of comfort and even empowerment,” says Sarkar, explaining how welfare schemes work.

contracting in police jobs

Despite the excitement over the new cash stimulus scheme, there was not much emphasis on job creation in the Budget 2026-27.

However, Ms Bhattacharya announced a salary hike of ₹1,000 for contractual employees. He said, “There are more than 1.25 lakh citizen volunteers, village police and green police workers in the state who are doing commendable work in helping the police administration. To acknowledge their contribution, I am happy to propose an increase of ₹1,000 in their monthly remuneration.”

This raised concerns over whether the police were moving towards an increased contract force. After Rape and murder of a doctor On August 9, 2024, at the RG Kar Hospital and Medical College, Kolkata, the accused and later convicted was found to be a civilian police volunteer who had easy access to the hospital.

The Supreme Court was incensed over such recruitment and, hearing the case on October 15, 2024, directed the West Bengal government to come clean on the “source of authority” by which civilian volunteers like Sanjay Roy, accused in the RG Kar rape and murder case, were appointed, especially in sensitive areas like schools and hospitals.

A bench of then Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud said that appointing political henchmen and sympathizers as ‘citizen volunteers’ “can be a good practice to provide political patronage to completely unverified people”.

However, these jobs provide some livelihood to the people. A civilian police volunteer (who did not want to be named) from the state’s Jhargram district says the ₹10,000 salary he earns at the end of each month does not sustain his family. When he started work in 2013, he used to earn ₹2,800.

He further said, “Most of the citizen volunteers in our district have to do something or the other. We have small pieces of land to grow vegetables, otherwise we would not have money to put food on the plate with such low salaries.” He works 27-28 days a month and gets only 14 days of casual leave in a year. There is no money to save for medical emergencies or to keep for retirement, or your children’s higher education.

He is embarrassed by the fact that his wife and mother receive money from Lakshmir Bhandar to run their household. “We are helpless. I am not proud of the fact that we accept free cash from the government. But what else do we have? In olden times, if one member in the family had a government job, the rest of the family lived a regular middle-class life,” he says.

Sanjay Poria, state president of the West Bengal Civic Police Association (WBCPA), says that in 2013, civic police volunteers had led a movement to demand better working conditions, minimum wages, medical insurance and recognition as permanent workers. But in 2014 he and many like him faced suspension for allegedly “politically motivated” protests against the state. As of today, Poria is still suspended. He now runs his own ambulance service in Keshpur area of ​​Paschim Medinipur district.

Poria says, “We wrote to every political party; no one came to help us. Once they attacked us, the movement was over. Have you seen any citizen volunteer demanding better working conditions or better wages? The movement is over. We were demanding very basic workers’ rights.” Many citizens and village police volunteers, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that as agricultural wages have dropped to ₹300 per day and sometimes even less, their only option was to migrate to metros in other states for work.

While the involvement of local civilian police volunteers has been useful for the Government of West Bengal in managing conflict in areas affected by Left Wing Extremism, there are frequent reports of the ruling political party using civilian police volunteers in illegal activities such as local elections and extortion. The involvement of civilian police personnel in the death of student leader Anish Khan in February 2022 had also sparked outrage.

Biswanath Chakraborty, professor of political science at Rabindra Bharati University, says that citizen volunteers have provided a political base to the Trinamool Congress. Chakraborty says, “There is no proper process for the appointment of such personnel. This leads to the local Trinamool Congress leadership appointing such personnel who will be loyal to them.”

“A civilian volunteer has no police powers,” says retired IPS officer Nazrul Islam, referring to Sanjay Roy, convicted in the RG Kar Hospital rape and murder case. Roy had a police motorcycle and accommodation, which are not part of the emoluments of this cadre.

After the school recruitment scam and municipal recruitment scam, government jobs in West Bengal have been affected, due to which re-examination had to be given, hence the work had to be postponed. While people, mostly youth, were standing in queues for the cash scheme for unemployment, protests were taking place on the streets of Kolkata demanding permanent jobs.