Laghuttam Sinchai Yojana (Minimum Irrigation Scheme), Chhattisgarh

What is Laghuttam Sinchai Yojana?

Laghuttam Sinchai Yojana, लघुत्तम सिंचाई योजना, literally the "minimum irrigation scheme", is a state-funded scheme of the Chhattisgarh Department of Agriculture Development, Farmer Welfare and Biotechnology. It appears as state-funded scheme number 5 on the department's own state schemes page at agriportal.cg.nic.in, where its guideline PDF sits alongside those for Kisan Samriddhi Yojana, Krishak Samagra Vikas Yojana and Shakambhari Yojana.

The scheme's purpose, as the name indicates, was to reach the farmer at the bottom of the irrigation ladder: a smallholder with no assured water source at all, for whom even a modest structure would convert a single rain-fed crop into two crops. Chhattisgarh runs a family of irrigation schemes graded by the kind of source involved, and Laghuttam Sinchai Yojana occupied the smallest rung of that family.

Is Laghuttam Sinchai Yojana currently funded?

This is the question that matters most for a farmer reading this page, and the honest answer is that Laghuttam Sinchai Yojana does not appear as a separate budget line in the Chhattisgarh agriculture department's outcome budgets for 2023-24, 2024-25, 2025-26 or 2026-27. Those documents, published by the state Finance Department, list every state-funded agriculture scheme with its provision and its physical target for the year. Kisan Samriddhi Yojana, Shakambhari Yojana, Micro-minor Irrigation Yojana, Krishak Samagra Vikas Yojana, Fasal Pradarshan Yojana and Jaivik Kheti Mission all appear there. Laghuttam Sinchai Yojana does not.

Nor does it appear as a selectable scheme on the department's own Agri-Subsidy demand sheet at agriportal.cg.nic.in/agrisubsidy, which lists the schemes for which block offices actually record farmer demand. The schemes shown there include Kisan Samriddhi Yojana, the general tube well scheme, Shakambhari Yojana, micro-irrigation, the Nadep tank scheme and the agricultural implements scheme — again, not Laghuttam Sinchai Yojana.

The reasonable reading, and the one to act on, is that the published guideline is a legacy document that remains on the portal for reference while the money and the physical targets now sit in the department's other irrigation windows. If you need the original terms of the scheme, ask your block agriculture office, because the guideline PDF on the portal is a scanned image and its text cannot be searched.

Which Chhattisgarh irrigation windows are funded instead?

The 2026-27 Chhattisgarh outcome budget for the agriculture department carries these state-funded irrigation lines:

Alongside them, Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana funds drip and sprinkler systems, and Chhattisgarh runs a separate state-funded micro irrigation scheme. A farmer who came looking for Laghuttam Sinchai Yojana is, in practice, being served by one of these.

Note how the scale has moved. Micro-minor Irrigation Yojana was provided Rs 20 crore for 80 ponds in 2024-25 and Rs 10 crore for 22 ponds in 2026-27. The individual-holding irrigation programme in Chhattisgarh is smaller each year and target-bound, which is exactly why registering demand early in the financial year decides whether a case is sanctioned at all.

Who was eligible, and who is not eligible now?

Under its original design, Laghuttam Sinchai Yojana followed the same eligibility grammar as the department's other irrigation schemes:

• The applicant had to be a farmer of Chhattisgarh with cultivable land recorded in his or her own name.
• The holding had to lack an assured irrigation source, which was the whole point of the scheme.
• Small and marginal farmers, and Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe and women farmers, were to be given priority, as in every beneficiary-oriented scheme of the department.

You are not eligible today in the plain sense that there is no open window: no application form, no annual target and no budget provision under this scheme name. A landless cultivator or unrecorded sharecropper was not eligible even under the original design, since the subsidy attaches to a physical irrigation work on a recorded holding. A farmer resident outside Chhattisgarh has never been eligible, the scheme being financed from the state budget.

How to apply for small irrigation support in Chhattisgarh

Because Laghuttam Sinchai Yojana has no live window, the practical application route is to register under whichever scheme is funded. Do it in this order:

1. Meet your Rural Agriculture Extension Officer, or go to the block agriculture office, early in the financial year: April or May, before the block's targets are committed.
2. Say what you need, not which scheme you want. Describe the field, the water available and the structure you have in mind. The office then places your case under the correct funded window: Kisan Samriddhi Yojana for a tube well, Shakambhari Yojana for a pump or well, Micro-minor Irrigation Yojana for a pond, or PMKSY for drip and sprinkler.
3. Submit the standard documents, Aadhaar, B-1 and Khasra, bank passbook copy, and a caste certificate if a higher category rate applies.
4. Let the demand be entered in the Agri-Subsidy MIS, where it counts against the block's target, and follow the site inspection and sanction process for that scheme.
5. Check the district's committed amount on the scheme-wise subsidy demand sheet at agriportal.cg.nic.in/agrisubsidy/RptDemaadSheet.aspx before assuming a fresh sanction is possible.

Grievance and help

Take questions about Laghuttam Sinchai Yojana, and about which irrigation window is open for you this year, to your Rural Agriculture Extension Officer, then the Senior Agriculture Development Officer at block level, and then the Deputy Director of Agriculture at the district. The Directorate of Agriculture at Raipur, under the Department of Agriculture Development, Farmer Welfare and Biotechnology, is the final departmental authority and the publisher of the state-funded scheme guidelines.

No fee is payable to any officer or agent for registering demand under any of these schemes, and subsidy is credited only to the beneficiary's own bank account.