Grants under Article 275(1) of the Constitution

What are Grants under Article 275(1) of the Constitution?

Grants under Article 275(1) of the Constitution is the oldest continuing central funding route for Scheduled Tribe development in India. Article 275(1) of the Constitution provides for grants-in-aid from the Consolidated Fund of India to states that need assistance, and its first proviso specifically authorises sums for schemes of development that promote the welfare of Scheduled Tribes or raise the level of administration in Scheduled Areas.

The Ministry of Tribal Affairs administers this money as central assistance to state governments. It is a 100% central grant, states do not put in a matching share for approved projects. Unlike a scholarship or a pension, there is no beneficiary list and no application window for citizens. State governments frame project proposals, the Ministry appraises them, and funds flow to state treasuries.

Main features

• Constitutional grants-in-aid, paid to states, not to individuals or NGOs.
• 100% central funding for approved projects; both capital and recurring costs can be covered.
• 10% of the annual allocation is reserved as an incentive for good performance and for innovative Scheduled Tribe development schemes.
• Sanctions are project-wise, cleared by the Ministry's Project Appraisal Committee (PAC).
• Funds have historically supported Eklavya Model Residential Schools, tribal hostels, link roads, drinking water schemes, health facilities and Forest Rights Act implementation.

Who is eligible for Grants under Article 275(1)?

Eligible recipients:

• State governments and union territory administrations with Scheduled Tribe populations, acting through their Tribal Welfare or Social Welfare departments.
• States with notified Scheduled Areas under the Fifth Schedule, where raising the level of administration is an explicit constitutional purpose of the grant.

Who cannot apply:

• Individuals and tribal families cannot apply. There is no personal cash benefit, no beneficiary registration and no portal where a citizen can file a claim under Article 275(1). Anyone offering to "register you" for an Article 275(1) grant is running a scam.
• NGOs and voluntary organisations are not eligible under this head. The Ministry of Tribal Affairs funds NGOs through a separate Scheme of Grant-in-Aid to Voluntary Organisations working for the Welfare of Scheduled Tribes: covered in its own guide on this site.
• Private firms, contractors and societies cannot receive grants directly. They can only be engaged by a state government through its normal tendering process for a sanctioned project.
• Districts and agencies cannot approach the Ministry directly. Every proposal must be consolidated and forwarded by the state nodal department.

What documents are required for an Article 275(1) proposal?

How to apply for funds under Article 275(1)

Grants under Article 275(1) follow an institutional route. The steps below are what a state government does — there is no parallel citizen process.

1. The State Tribal Welfare Department collects proposals from districts, Integrated Tribal Development Agencies and line departments, based on gaps in Scheduled Areas and tribal-majority blocks.
2. The state prepares a project proposal with a detailed project report and cost estimate in the Ministry of Tribal Affairs format, covering justification, physical targets, cost and completion schedule.
3. The state submits the consolidated proposal to the Ministry of Tribal Affairs, along with utilisation certificates and progress reports for projects already sanctioned.
4. The Ministry examines the proposal and places it before the Project Appraisal Committee (PAC), which approves, modifies or returns it and fixes the sanctioned amount.
5. On approval, the Ministry releases funds to the state, usually in instalments linked to physical progress and to receipt of utilisation certificates.
6. The state executes the project through its own departments or agencies and reports physical and financial progress to the Ministry.

If you want a project taken up in your village, a hostel, an approach road, a drinking water scheme, the practical route is to get the demand recorded by your Gram Sabha and pursued through the block and district administration so it enters the state's proposal.

How much money is available under Article 275(1)?

There is no fixed per-state or per-project entitlement. The Ministry of Tribal Affairs allocates state-wise amounts each financial year and sanctions individual projects on merit through the PAC. Sanctions vary widely in size: Gujarat's tribal development department records a single 2019 PAC approval of Rs 14,963.88 lakh for seven projects, including a tribal university, three educational institutions, road construction and community infrastructure.

Ten per cent of the annual allocation is held back as the performance and innovation incentive, which states can access for pilots and new models rather than routine construction.

How Article 275(1) differs from other tribal schemes

Article 275(1) is a funding channel, not a benefit scheme. That distinction matters when you are looking for help:

• For school education, look at Eklavya Model Residential Schools, which Article 275(1) originally seeded.
• For village infrastructure in tribal-majority villages, look at Pradhan Mantri Adi Adarsh Gram Yojana and Dharti Aaba Janjatiya Gram Utkarsh Abhiyan.
• For forest produce livelihoods, look at the Van Dhan Vikas Kendras and the Minimum Support Price for Minor Forest Produce mechanism.
• For individual scholarships, look at the pre-matric, post-matric, national fellowship and overseas scholarship schemes for ST students.

Each of those has a real citizen application. Article 275(1) does not.

Where to get information and raise issues

• Ministry of Tribal Affairs, State Grants page: tribal.nic.in/sg.aspx
• Your State Tribal Welfare Department, which holds the sanction letters and project lists for your state.
• Right to Information requests to the state department are the usual way citizens obtain project-wise sanction and expenditure details.

No fee is payable to anyone in connection with Article 275(1) funds, and no official will ask a citizen to pay or register for this grant.

How to check your application status

There is no citizen-facing tracking system for Article 275(1) funds, because the "applicant" here is a state government department, not a person. If you are a state official, a district officer, or a citizen trying to find out what happened to a specific proposal, use these routes instead of looking for a portal login:

1. Check with the State Tribal Welfare Department first. This department files the proposal and receives all correspondence from the Ministry of Tribal Affairs, including approval letters, queries, and fund release orders. It is the only office that can tell you where a specific project stands, whether that is still under Project Appraisal Committee (PAC) review, approved and awaiting release, or released and under execution.
2. Ask which PAC meeting the proposal was listed for. The Ministry appraises proposals in batches at PAC meetings, so a department can usually tell you the meeting date a project was taken up in, and whether it was approved, sent back for revision, or deferred for more information.
3. Track fund release through the state treasury or the executing department, since sanctioned money is transferred to the state government and then flows to the district or agency actually building the school, road, or hostel. The state finance or tribal welfare department's release order is the record that a tranche has actually reached the ground.
4. File a Right to Information request with the state department if informal follow-up does not get a clear answer. Since there is no individual applicant number to track, an RTI asking for the sanction order, release schedule, and physical progress report for a named project is the most reliable way for a citizen or Gram Sabha to get documented status.
5. Raise it through the Gram Sabha or district administration if the concern is that a demanded project was never taken up at all. This does not check the status of an existing proposal, but it is how a village pushes a fresh demand into the state's pipeline for the next cycle. Contacting tribal.nic.in directly rarely helps an individual, since the Ministry's counterpart in this process is always the state department, not a citizen or a village.

Common reasons for rejection

Article 275(1) proposals get returned, deferred, or dropped by the Project Appraisal Committee for reasons that are specific to inter-government grant appraisal, not the document-mismatch problems that affect individual scheme applications:

• Pending utilisation certificates for earlier releases. The single most common reason a state's new proposal stalls is that UCs for money already sanctioned have not been submitted. The fix is procedural discipline at the state end: close out UCs for completed or ongoing projects before, or alongside, submitting the next batch of proposals.
• Proposal not routed through the nodal department. A project reaching the Ministry directly from a district, an implementing agency, or a contractor without going through the State Tribal Welfare Department gets sent back, since only the state's nodal department can submit on the state's behalf. The fix is to consolidate every proposal at the state department before it leaves for Delhi.
• Weak or incomplete detailed project report. A DPR without a proper cost estimate, technical vetting by the competent state authority, or a clear implementation timeline is a frequent ground for the PAC to defer a project rather than reject it outright. States that get quick clearances typically resubmit with a technically vetted estimate and a realistic completion schedule rather than a broad-brush proposal.
• Project does not fit the constitutional purpose of the grant. Article 275(1) money is meant for Scheduled Tribe welfare and administration in Scheduled Areas, so proposals that read as general infrastructure with only a loose tribal connection, or that duplicate what a different central scheme (such as Eklavya Model Residential Schools or Pradhan Mantri Adi Adarsh Gram Yojana) already funds, invite closer questioning from the Ministry. Framing the justification around the specific tribal population and Scheduled Area it serves reduces this risk.
• Duplication with another central or state scheme. Since several ministries fund overlapping tribal infrastructure, a proposal that is already covered, or substantially covered, by another central grant can be held back to avoid double funding. States are expected to certify that the same work is not already sanctioned elsewhere.
• Budget ceiling for the year already committed. Even a technically sound proposal can be deferred to the next financial year if the state's annual Article 275(1) allocation, or the 10% incentive pool, is already fully committed to other approved projects. This is not a rejection on merit, and such proposals are usually the first taken up once the new year's allocation is released.

None of these reasons are things an individual tribal family can fix, since the applicant of record is always the state government. A citizen or Gram Sabha whose local project has stalled gets the most traction by asking the district administration and State Tribal Welfare Department directly which of these stages the proposal is stuck at.