UP Elections: Inside Yogi’s Pre-poll Spending Sprint

On August 12, the Uttar Pradesh (UP) government said it was considering a scheme to transfer Rs 50,000 to women in the state. The policy has not yet been finalised. The money, when it comes, is to be released in three instalments—the first before UP votes, the remaining two after the election, according to officials who do not wish to be named.

A week earlier, on August 5, the government cleared a supplementary budget of Rs 59,019.54 crore. Officials said it was raised to fast-track projects announced in May—12 weeks before. Between the middle of May and the middle of August, the Yogi Adityanath government announced or enhanced schemes at a rate of roughly one a week. They reach women, teachers, farmers, lawyers, veterinary students, school drop-outs, competitive exam aspirants, children under six, boatmen and potters. The assembly election is due in February-March 2027. The model code of conduct is expected to take effect in January.

The question the calendar raises is not about the worth of the schemes. It is whether this is a governing programme arriving at maturity, or a delivery schedule written backwards from the polling day.

The Pace of Announcements

From end to end, the three months read as a single run. On May 18, the cabinet tripled the stipend for students of veterinary medicine at government institutes, from Rs 4,000 to Rs 12,000. The same day, it cleared a 1,010-bed hospital in Shaheed Path, Lucknow, at an estimated cost of Rs 855 crore.

Emoluments for shiksha mitras or friends of education and part-time instructors have been revised with effect from April 1, 2026. Eligible educational staff have been given health cover of Rs 5 lakh. Lawyers representing the state in the lower courts and the higher judiciary have got a hike of up to 50 per cent. Boat operators in river cities will have to register with Rs 50, and they will receive insurance coverage and the benefits of a welfare fund. Potters or kumhars will get free clay from the village pond for a definite period. Students preparing for competitive examinations are to get free coaching. Serving bureaucrats have been directed to visit schools and counsel intermediate students on careers. The state government is expanding its bal vatikas—government-run play schools—and converting anganwadi centres into pre-primary sections for children aged three to six. New data centres have been announced with the promise of employment.

A further set of existing schemes was reworked in the same window with enhanced payouts. District government counsels representing the government at the district courts were earlier getting Rs 9,000 and now get Rs 14,000. The additional district government counsel, who was earlier getting Rs 7,000, now gets Rs 11,000. The instructors were earlier getting Rs 9,000, which is now revised, and they will get Rs 17,000.

This is extraordinary. The rapid pace of revised payouts may be an attempt to win voters over. In the 2024 general election, the Samajwadi Party (SP) finished ahead in UP with 37 seats, leading the INDIA bloc. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won 33 seats and the Congress six. The alliance took Faizabad, which covers Ayodhya, and cut the BJP’s margin in Varanasi.

“In 2024, the BJP was restricted by the alliance of the SP and the Congress. The seats were cut down,” says Sudha Pai, a political scientist. Within the party, the 2024 result was attributed, in part, to friction between the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the saffron cadres. Pai reads the present pace as anxiety rather than confidence in the aftermath of the 2024 election results.

The Canvass

We can read the BJP’s strategy in another way. The list can be seen as a constituency map. Nine or 10 blocs are addressed in sequence, each with a scheme attached to it: cash for women, emoluments for teachers, fees for state counsel, stipends for veterinary students, coaching for aspirants, career counselling for school drop-outs, pre-primary places for the under-six children, a welfare fund for boatmen and free clay for potters.

The last two are not welfare categories in the way a hospital is. Boat operators and kumhars are occupational groups with caste weight in Purvanchal and in the eastern districts, the Nishad community constitutes about 3-4 per cent of the population, while kumhars make up for about one per cent. Mirzapur, Katehari (Ambedkar Nagar) and Chauri Chaura (Gorakhpur rural), Gyanpur (Bhadohi district) and Handia Karchhana in Prayagraj are dominated by this community. The BJP needs them because the consolidated vote share of these communities is a decisive Other Backward Classes non-Yadav vote bank.

There is a paradox. Since 2014, the UP electorate has repeatedly chosen economic mobility over caste expression. In 2019, despite violence targeting Dalits, the caste arithmetic did not deliver for the SP-Bahujan Samaj Party alliance—it was defeated by voters who backed the growth argument.

A government that has won twice on that argument is now approaching the electorate one occupation at a time. Either the growth story stopped working in 2024, or the cash transfers are insurance against something the party is not naming. “Anti-incumbency is bothering the top brass of the BJP,” says UP Congress spokesperson Anshu Awasthi.

“After the Gen-Z protest, the government is desperate to connect with intermediate students. The bureaucrats have been asked to visit schools and guide the students for competitive exams. The public will see the motive behind these moves,” says Awasthi.

What It Costs

The women’s cash transfer is the largest single commitment of the quarter. There is no official budget breakdown because the UP government has not formally announced or confirmed the proposed Rs 50,000 financial assistance scheme for women. The government proposes to cover one million women.

A comparison of schemes in other states gives some indication of what follows. Cash transfers to women preceded the BJP victories in Madhya Pradesh (Ladli Behna Yojana, 2023), Maharashtra (Mukhyamantri Majhi Ladki Bahin Yojana, 2024) and Bihar (Mukhyamantri Mahila Rojgar Yojana, 2025). In at least two of those states, the fiscal consequences arrived after the result.

A report by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India highlighted financial irregularities, including an unjustified excess expenditure of Rs 3,541 crore, diversion of funds from other allocations and Rs 15,586 crore parked improperly in deposit accounts in Maharashtra’s Mukhyamantri Majhi Ladki Bahin Yojana. More than 92 lakh women from the beneficiary list have been removed following large-scale verification and an e-KYC drive. Maharashtra now faces a major political and administrative controversy.

The opposition Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar) have slammed the administration, alleging that e-KYC hurdles and sudden exclusions point to a severe financial crisis or a phased closure of the scheme after using it for pre-election gains. In Madhya Pradesh, reportedly, there were issues with verification. Reports of transfers of funds and the portal not working have surfaced after the elections. The SP’s chief spokesperson, Rajendra Choudhary, says, “Why now? Why is there a sudden urgency when elections are just a few months away? They have not spent the total budget for the state as of now. And now they are on an overdrive to launch and approve projects.”

New, Old or Delhi’s

Not everything announced is new, and not all of them are the state’s programmes. The Divyangjan Sashaktikaran Pension Yojana dates back to 1995. The Mukhyamantri Gramodyog Rojgar Yojana was launched in 2002. The state’s solar pump scheme runs on central funding through PM-KUSUM. PM Kisan is centrally funded. The Mission for Integrated Development of Horticulture, which offers subsidies of 40-50 per cent—up to Rs 1 lakh for small thatched-roof units and Rs 2 lakh for commercial and air-conditioned units—is a central scheme. The Krishi Yantra Yojana and the Mukhyamantri Khet Suraksha Yojana are run by the state.

Choudhary pushes the point further. “They claim that the ‘One District One Product (ODOP)’ project is the brainchild of this government, whereas this was in place much before this government. The Agra-Lucknow expressway was conceptualised during the SP regime. The Lucknow Metro happened when the SP was in power. They just talk.”

The Government’s Case

The government’s position is that the past nine years have moved UP out of the Bimaru states—the four northern states that have historically struggled with low economic growth, poor health care and low literacy rates, and that the current quarter continues a long programme rather than departing from it. “Large-scale investment in airports, health care, expressways, industrial corridors, education, digital governance, law and order, and tourism has reshaped the development of the state,” said Adityanath during a public address on July 15.

The regional case is made on Bundelkhand, historically the state’s most water-scarce region, where the Ken-Betwa river-linking project is expected to alter irrigation and drinking water supply, and where the Bundelkhand expressway has connected every district to Lucknow. Western UP, the country’s sugar bowl, has the rapid rail. Unnao has the defence corridor. The ODOP is offered as evidence of enterprise reaching smaller cities. Religious tourism has expanded in Chitrakoot, Varanasi and above all Ayodhya, where the temple, urban redevelopment and the airport have together raised the footfall.

Whatever has been sanctioned and disbursed before the model code of conduct takes effect is real. What is only announced by then is a pledge. The situation now indicates that the women’s cash transfer falls on both sides of that line: one instalment before the vote, two after. UP votes in February-March 2027. The bills for what has been promised since May arrives after that—for whichever government is in place to pay it.

Chandrani Banerjee is a senior journalist