Pradhan Mantri Anusuchit Jaati Abhyuday Yojna (PM-AJAY), PM-AJAY portal and PM-AJAY Mobile App

About Pradhan Mantri Anusuchit Jaati Abhyuday Yojna (PM-AJAY)

• The Pradhan Mantri Anusuchit Jaati Abhyuday Yojna (PM-AJAY) is a comprehensive initiative launched in FY 2021-22.
• Nodal ministry: The scheme is implemented by the Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment.
• Aim: It aimed at the socio-economic upliftment of Scheduled Castes (SCs).
• It is a merger scheme of three erstwhile Centrally Sponsored Schemes, namely, Pradhan Mantri Adarsh Gram Yojana (PMAGY), Special Central Assistance to Scheduled Castes Sub Plan (SCA to SCSP) and Babu Jagjivan Ram Chhatrawas Yojana (BJRCY).
• Focus: It focuses on reducing poverty, enhancing educational opportunities, and improving infrastructure in SC-dominated areas.​
• Funding pattern: The scheme is 100% funded by the Central Government. However, the States/UTs are free to provide additional funds from their own resources if they so desire.
• Implementation pattern: It has been implemented in total 28 States and UTs.
  • Note: Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Andaman & Nicobar Islands, Dadra Nagar Haveli, Daman & Diu, Ladakh& Lakshadweep are not covered under this scheme.
• Eligibility Criteria for the Scheme
  • The Scheduled Castes persons living below the poverty lines are eligible for getting benefits under the various Income Generating Schemes and Skill Development Programmes.
  • In case of Infrastructure Development, the villages having 50% or more SC population are eligible for grants under the Scheme.
• Components: It encompasses several components designed to address various aspects of development:​
  • Adarsh Gram Development: Transforming SC-majority villages into ‘Adarsh Grams’ (model villages) by filling critical gaps in infrastructure and services.​
    • Up to 50% of the total allocated funds under the scheme to the States/UTs are used for gap-filling activities for selected villages.
  • Grants-in-Aid for Socio-Economic Projects: It provides financial assistance for district/state-level projects aimed at the socio-economic betterment of SCs. This includes:​
    • Creation of infrastructure in SC-dominated villages.​
    • Construction of hostels/residential schools.​
    • Comprehensive livelihood projects, including skill development and related infrastructure.​
    • Financial assistance towards loans taken by beneficiaries for asset acquisition/creation required for livelihood generation.
  • Construction of Hostels: This component includes building hostels in higher educational institutions ranked under the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) and funded by the Centre/State/UT Governments.
    • Similarly, it also includes constructing hostels in schools funded by the Centre/State/UT Governments and recommended by the Ministry of Education.​
    • Up to 2% of the total allocated funds are utilised for hostel construction and repair.
•  Monitoring and Evaluation: This component has an allocation of up to 5% of the total funds for administrative expenses, including:​
  • Development of a centralized Management Information System (MIS).​
    • Hiring institutions for technical resource support and manpower.​
    • Provision of office equipment and IT facilities.​
    • Undertaking evaluation projects and social audits.​
    • Social Audit of the scheme implementation.

About PM-AJAY Portal

• The PM-AJAY portal serves as the central database linked digital face, to enable milestone-linked fund flows.
• It is designed to facilitate seamless coordination among stakeholders and ensure faster and more accountable service delivery to beneficiaries.
• Features:
  • Digitalization planning:  The paper-based planning will be replaced with digital planning at village level especially for Adarsh Gram component.
  • It will provide comprehensive national, state, and district-level dashboards to monitor model village development against 50 monitorable socio-economic indicators across 10 developmental domains for Adarsh Gram component.
    • It automates milestone-linked tracking as soon as a Village Development Plan (VDP) is digitally approved.
  • Further, for Grants-in-Aid (GIA) Component, the portal serves as a centralized management information system (MIS) that aggregates state-wide data to track large-scale financial outlays and funding allocations for livelihoods.
  • It also provides the platform for the physical and financial progress of the Hostel Component.
  • It enforces absolute transparency and faster turnaround time for scheme progress.
• Progress: Its dashboard records progress in socio-economic development in more than 47000 SC majority villages and over 4 million beneficiaries across all components.

About PM-AJAY Mobile App

• It has been developed as a unified digital platform to extend the services and functionalities of the existing PMAGY and PM AJAY portals to mobile users.
• The application provides seamless access to scheme-related information, monitoring, reporting, and beneficiary-centric services through a user-friendly mobile interface.
• Aim: It aims to provide mobile-based access to scheme services, improve field-level monitoring, facilitate real-time reporting, and strengthen transparency and digital governance.
• Features:
  • The application includes Adarsh Gram, Grant-in-Aid (GIA), and Hostel components with integrated monitoring, reporting, proposal management, inspection, and beneficiary tracking functionalities.
  • It enables offline door-to-door surveys and real-time generation of Village Development Plans (VDPs) across 50 socio-economic indicators across 10 developmental domains, in Adarsh Gram.
  • In Grants-in-Aid (GIA) Component, the mobile application enables field teams to execute digital beneficiary registration. It also allows implementing agencies in the state to seamlessly track the end-to-end progress of individual livelihood initiatives and skill training journeys in real time.
  • Hostel Component part of the the mobile app facilitates the instant electronic submission of new construction and repair proposals directly from the project site.
  • It empowers field inspectors to capture and upload mandatory geo-tagged, time-stamped photographs across critical building stages to visually validate physical infrastructure milestones.