Sunny Leone listed ‘beneficiary’ of Chhattisgarh government cash dole

RAIPUR

Sunny Leone has been a ‘beneficiary’ of the Chhattisgarh government’s Mahtari Vandan Yojana and has withdrawn ₹10,000 from a bank account in Bastar, so says the inquiry into a case in which money was fraudulently withdrawn using the actor’s name under the scheme. 

The scheme is a direct cash incentive scheme under which ₹1,000 is given to eligible married women in the State. It was a major poll promise made by the Bharatiya Janata Party during the 2023 Assembly election campaign. 

The website through which data on the beneficiaries can be publicly accessed shows the name of the beneficiary as “Sunny Leon” and her husband’s name as “Jonny Sins”, both misspelt names of the actors.

Bastar Collector Haris S said that a man, identified as Virendra Joshi, had opened the account and withdrawn nearly ₹10,000 in the actor’s name. Mr. Joshi is from the same Bastar village where the fake account was opened. He works for a private company in Jagdalpur and his wife is a beneficiary of the scheme, said Mr. Haris. 

In the routine course, probable beneficiaries submit an application to a local anganwadi worker who carries out a physical verification of the applicant and then forwards the details to her supervisor. Mr. Haris said that following the latest revelation, the anganwadi worker and the supervisor are under the scanner. Why Mr. Joshi used a specific celebrity’s name is being probed, said the collector.

Earlier this month, the Vishnu Deo Sai government disbursed ₹652.04 crore as the tenth installment of the scheme, that counts 70 lakh married women as beneficiaries. To date, over ₹5,000 crore has been transferred directly to the bank accounts of these women under the scheme.