The Government implements various schemes for the welfare and upliftment of every strata, including minorities, specially the economically weaker and lesser privileged sections of the society, through various schemes of the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, Ministry of Textiles, Ministry of Culture, Ministry of Women and Child Development and Ministry of Rural Development.
Ministry of Minority Affairs specifically implements various schemes across the country for socio-economic and educational empowerment of the six (6) centrally notified minority communities. The benefits of the welfare schemes meant for the minority communities are being availed of by the eligible beneficiaries.
State-wise allocation of funds is not made under the schemes of Ministry of Minority Affairs. However, under the Pradhan Mantri Jan Vikas Karyakram (PMJVK), which is a Centrally Sponsored Scheme for development of community infrastructure projects in identified area, funds are released to the State Governments for implementation of the scheme. In order to ensure that funds are optimally utilised by the States, as per the revised procedure of Department of Expenditure, Ministry of Finance, now the release of funds under PMJVK are not tied to the individual projects. The States have been given flexibility to use the funds released under PMJVK. The amount available in the bank account of State Nodal Agency (SNA) of PMJVK forms a common pool, which can be utilised by the States to complete the ongoing projects. Also, the Pradhan Mantri Jan Vikas Karyakram (PMJVK) has been revised from financial year 2022-23 for implementation in all districts of the country. A mobile app PMJVK Bhuvan has been developed for Geo-tagging of all the assets created under PMJVK and capturing the project specific attributes including photographs of different stages of construction/completion of projects for better implementation/ monitoring of the projects under PMJVK.
In order to ensure that the benefits of the schemes implemented for minorities actually reach the intended beneficiaries, the scholarship amount/ stipend/ financial assistance under various schemes of this Ministry including skilling is released directly into the account of beneficiaries through Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) mode. Further, the Scholarship schemes are being implemented through the National Scholarship Portal (NSP) which has features of sanity check, avoiding de-duplication, thereby resulting in elimination of middlemen, ghost beneficiaries etc.
This information was given by the Union Minister of Minority Affairs, Smt. Smriti Zubin Irani, in a written reply in Lok Sabha.
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