PATNA, Jan. 13 -- The rural development department of Bihar is preparing a standard operating procedure (SOP) to provide up to Rs.200,000 in additional financial assistance to women who have successfully launched businesses with the seed grant of Rs.10,000 of under the Mukhyamantri Mahila Rozgar Yojana (MMRY), officials said. Launched jointly by PM Modi and CM Nitish Kumar in September 2025, the scheme aims to promote women's economic independence by supporting one woman from each family to start or expand a livelihood activity of her choice - ranging from tailoring, food processing and handicrafts to animal husbandry and small retail enterprises. Under the scheme, women entrepreneurs were offered an initial non-refundable grant of Rs.10,000 in their bank accounts. So far, the first instalment has been disbursed to around 1.56 crore women associated with Jeevika, a society formed by the state government to support women empowerment, across 38 districts and a total sum of Rs.15,600 crore have been distributed. District-level figures, based on Aadhaar-linked and digitised applications, show particularly high enrolment in Patna (6,20,761 beneficiaries), Purbi Champaran (7,72,452), Muzaffarpur (7,48,325) and other densely populated areas, pushing the state total to 1,56,00,010. Officials said fresh applications for the initial Rs.10,000 grant had been stopped, while roughly 1.9m pending cases were still being processed. Attention has now shifted to the second phase: helping promising ventures grow. Bihar Rural Livelihoods Promotion Society, which runs Jeevika and is the state agency to implement the scheme, is finalising the SOP. Once it clears the state cabinet, women whose businesses show viability will be eligible for phased additional funding of up to Rs.2 lakh, based on assessment of performance. Himanshu Sharma, CEO of Jeevika and state mission director, said committees at block, district and state levels were being set up to evaluate business plans. "We are working out the detailed criteria for selection, the assessment process and the disbursement mechanism," Sharma told Hindustan Times. "Women with scalable and innovative ideas will not only get extra financial support but also specialised training in technical skills, marketing and business management to help them sustain and expand their enterprises," he added. The scheme leverages Bihar's extensive network of over one million women's self-help groups formed under Jeevika over the past two decades, and dovetails with the Centre's Lakhpati Didi initiative that seeks to create at least three crore women millionaires through collective enterprise and skill-building....