UP Budget 2025-26: Free Scooty Scheme for Meritorious Women Students

Lucknow, Feb 20 (PTI) Moving on a key 2022 poll promise, the UP government on Thursday said it will unveil a scheme of providing a free scooty to each meritorious woman student in the state.

Both Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and Finance Minister Suresh Khanna, who tabled the state Budget for 2025-26, made separate references to the scheme and said an initial sum of Rs 400 crore has been kept aside in the Budget for this purpose.

"We have decided to unveil a scheme for providing scooty to meritorious women students. This government scheme has been named after Maharani Laxmi Bai," Adityanath said in his post-Budget presser on Thursday.

Providing free scooty to meritorious women students in the state was a major poll promise of the BJP ahead of the 2022 UP elections.

The promise was a key part of the BJP's Lok Kalyan Sankalp Patra before the 2022 polls and was then interpreted as part of its plans to blunt the Congress's women-centric pre-poll promises.