New Delhi: The Bihar government has said that it will not be taking any coercive action to recover money credited to wrongful recipients of its scheme meant for members of women’s self-help groups.The Mukhyamantri Mahila Rojgar Yojana gives payment of Rs 10,000 into accounts of eligible women as first instalment. The payment scheme had invited criticism over its timing. Prime minister Narendra Modi announced it two months before the assembly elections. Under it, 1.5 crore women are reported to have been paid Rs 10,000 each.Officials of the Bihar government’s poverty alleviation initiative Jeevika said recently that some men had also been given Rs 10,000 each. When officials issued recovery notices to them, they allegedly asked for their votes to be returned first.The Indian Express has quoted Bihar Jeevika CEO Himanshu Pandey as having said, “Apart from the 11 lakh women self-help groups, we also have 1,000 such groups of divyang (the disabled). We detected that 470 differently abled men have also received Rs 10,000 each under the Mahila Rojgar Yojana…”.Pandey said that “errors may happen” in a large scheme and added that apart from the case of the “470 disabled,” errors were few. “We got some stray instances where bank accounts into which money went were joint ones with spouses, but that is okay,” he told Indian Express.Pandey also said that the Bihar government will not be taking any “coercive action” to recover money from the wrongful recipients.The opposition Rashtriya Janata Dal has highlighted how these mistakes display the tearing hurry in which the government distributed Rs 10,000 each. RJD spokesperson Mrityunjay Tiwari said, “Let people know if Jeevika worked under election pressure to distribute Rs 10,000 without properly checking bank accounts.”