I don't know how you are getting your data from the file read, but you can avoid the eval by massaging your input string creatively, then just add them to the anonymous hash.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

my $hash = {'MONTH' => 'January'};

print $hash->{MONTH} . "\n";

my $string =  q('MONTH' => 'January'); #from file
# I split your original string, but there probably is a cleaner
# way from your file read

my @split = split / => /, $string;
s/'//g for @split;
print "@split\n";

my $hash1->{ $split[0] } = $split[1];
print $hash1->{MONTH} . "\n";
[download]

Output:

$ ./962633.pl
January
MONTH January
January
[download]

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