Widows in Chhota Udaipur district gathered outside the local MP’s office this week to demand that Gujarat raise its monthly widow pension from Rs 1,250 to between Rs 3,000 and Rs 4,000, telling MP Jashubbhai Rathva that the current amount cannot cover cooking gas, groceries and school costs. The pension, paid under the state’s Ganga Swarupa Yojana, has not increased since April 2019.
A scheme frozen for seven years
Gujarat renamed its widow pension programme, formerly Vidhva Sahay Yojana, to Ganga Swarupa Yojana to give beneficiaries a more dignified label, and it currently pays roughly 3.7 lakh widows across the state Rs 1,250 a month, deposited in the first week of each month. The government raised the amount from Rs 1,000 to Rs 1,250 in April 2019, but it has stayed there since, even as fuel, food and rent have all climbed. Eligibility is restricted to widows aged 18 to 40 with annual household income under Rs 1,20,000 in rural areas or Rs 1,50,000 in urban areas, and remarried women lose the benefit.
The Chhota Udaipur protest is a local flashpoint for a complaint that beneficiaries across Gujarat share. The women who gathered this week argued that a household cannot run on Rs 1,250 amid current inflation, pointing to the cost of a single cooking gas cylinder, which alone can eat up a large share of the monthly amount, before groceries or a child’s school fees are even counted. Rathva, responding to the delegation, said he would forward the demand to the central government, though it remains a state scheme and the state government sets the pension amount.
What it means for beneficiaries statewide
For many recipients, the Rs 1,250 pension is not a supplementary benefit but a primary source of income for older widows without other earners in the household. The gap between the fixed amount and rising costs is sharper in cities, where rent and daily expenses run higher than in rural Gujarat, even though the scheme’s income cap is more generous for urban applicants. Because eligibility caps out at age 40, women who lose husbands later in life or who cross the income threshold as their children start earning fall outside the scheme entirely, a structural gap that predates the current inflation debate but is drawing renewed attention alongside it.
State finances complicate any quick fix. Extending the current Rs 1,250 payout to Rs 3,000 for 3.7 lakh beneficiaries would roughly double the scheme’s annual outlay, a jump officials have previously flagged as a significant burden on the state exchequer when similar demands have surfaced in past years. That fiscal reality is part of why the amount has stayed static since 2019 even as other welfare payouts have been periodically revised.
Outlook
Chhota Udaipur’s protest is unlikely to be the last. With state budget discussions typically taking shape ahead of the next financial year, welfare groups and opposition leaders are likely to keep raising the pension gap as a talking point, especially if similar delegations form in other districts. Whether the state revises the amount will depend on how much political pressure builds beyond this single constituency, and on how the government weighs the cost against demands from other welfare schemes competing for the same budget.
Sources: Gujarat Samachar — widow pension demand, CMO Gujarat — Ganga Swarupa Yojana amount and eligibility
This report was compiled and written with AI assistance from publicly reported sources, and reviewed for accuracy.