New Delhi: Ahead of the assembly elections due in February 2027 in Uttar Pradesh, the Adityanath-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government is considering a Rs 50,000 cash deposit scheme for women, reported Deccan Herald.According to the report, based on sources, the amount is likely to be transferred in three installments into the accounts of female beneficiaries. While the first instalment of Rs 20,000 would be transferred before the assembly elections, the remaining amount shall be handed over in three instalments of Rs 10,000 each. There is, however, no official confirmation so far from the UP government regarding the scheme. Neither has any of the BJP leaders confirmed development on this front. Responding to news reports about the women’s dole scheme, former chief minister of Uttar Pradesh and Samajwadi Party (SP) supremo Akhilesh Yadav wrote on X: “The BJP has nothing left except money to win elections. That too is the BJP’s ill-gotten money, which the religious-minded women of Uttar Pradesh will never accept.”Assuming that the state government had been giving such financial assistance to women voters in the last 10 years genuinely, which translates to Rs 5 lakh in the bank accounts of such beneficiaries until now, Yadav, a former chief minister, further stated on X: “Rs 20,000 is only four percent of Rs 5 lakh, which means these BJP people have swallowed 96 percent of women’s share.”“After theft in the temple and attacks on children, the BJP has neither morality nor courage left”, he added.Such cash transfer schemes for women have earlier helped the BJP win state assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh, with its ‘Ladli Behna Yojna’ in 2023; ‘Ladki Bahin Yojana’ in Maharashtra in 2024; and NDA government’s ‘Mukhya Mantri Mahila Rozgar Yojana’ rolled out in Bihar in 2025. In Delhi, too, the BJP government has launched its ‘Lakshmi Yojana’ scheme from August this year. BBC earlier reported that the Reserve Bank of India had, in its 2024-25 report on state finances warned against increasing state subsidy burden. “States need to contain and rationalise their subsidy outgoes, so that such spending does not crowd out more productive expenditure,” said the RBI’s report.Earlier, in March 2026, Yadav, while kickstarting the election campaign from Dadri in Noida, had also announced that if voted to power his government will offer women a financial assistance of Rs 40,000.In the upcoming UP assembly elections, due in almost six months, chief minister Yogi Adityanath would be vying for the people’s mandate for a third term in power. For a state government that has frequently publicised itself as ‘double engine sarkar’ – the tagline referring to the BJP-led governments both at the state and the Union – the significance of polls can be gauged from the fact that as the Jantar Mantar protests, led by Cockroach Janta Party, gathered pace, historian Mukul Kesavan in a piece for The Guardian noted, “There was an assembly election scheduled in Uttar Pradesh next year and Modi knew that the BJP would haemorrhage political support if the Jantar Mantar impasse wasn’t resolved.”