About one fourth of welfare funds for scheduled castes unutilised in 2024-25, lowest in a decade

Time of India

27-04-2025

About one-fourth of funds earmarked for the welfare of Scheduled Castes remained unutilised in 2024-25 financial year, the lowest utilisation in a decade. About ₹1.66 lakh crore were allocated by 39 central ministries and departments under the
Developmental Action Plan for Scheduled Castes
(DAPSC) in 2024-25. Of this, ₹1.24 lakh crore or 74.74% of funds allocated under budget estimates were utilised.
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Statistics of the
ministry of social justice and empowerment
, the nodal ministry for DAPSC, reveal that 18 of the 39 central ministries spent less than 90% of the allocated funds. On an average, about 85-90% of the allocated funds under DAPSC have been utilised with the exception of two fiscals when the pandemic hit.
The utilisation had gone down further to 76.12% in 2019-20 and 75.41% in 2020-21. According to statistics furnished by the ministry in Parliament on April 3, 2018, the lowest utilisation was in 2014-15 when 59.42% of the budget estimates was utilised. An email questionnaire sent to ministry of social justice and empowerment went unanswered.
The concept of 'Special Component Plan (SCP)' for SCs was introduced in 1979. This was envisaged to help the poor SC families through composite income generating welfare and developmental schemes. Certain central ministries were required to earmark 2-20% of their budget outlay for
SC welfare schemes
.
The nomenclature of SCP was changed to '
Scheduled Castes Sub Plan
' (SCSP) in 2006 and then again to Allocation for Welfare of Scheduled Castes in 2017-18 budget and now to DAPSC. The number of ministries which earmark this fund has increased from 14 to 26 to 30 to the present 39. Currently, these ministries earmark funds for 233 schemes.
According to sources, the biggest challenge to this programme has been the inability of ministries to find targeted schemes. Due to this, the budget estimates are usually reduced at the revised estimates stage. Data from 2011-12 fiscal till date shows that budget estimates have been scaled up in six fiscals -- 2015-16, 2016-17, 2017-18, 2018-19, 2021-22 and 2022-23.
Some ministries like coal, telecommunications and micro, small and medium enterprises have not been able to identify these schemes. In the last term, Modi government had proposed revamping the scheme as it had found that ministries were earmarking funds for generic schemes that just included SC beneficiaries. This "notional" allocation was not serving the core purpose of DAPSC.
The Niti Aayog had proposed a central fund which would directly transfer money to SC households with less than ₹5,000 monthly income. However, this plan has not fructified and now social justice ministry closely monitors the progress, identifying schemes for different ministries. According to sources, the utilisation in 2024-25 has been low because model code of conduct was in place for the parliamentary elections and sanctions for schemes could not take place for at least 2 months.