Kishori Shakti Yojana (Haryana)

What is Kishori Shakti Yojana in Haryana?

Kishori Shakti Yojana, sometimes written Kishori Shakti Yojna, is the adolescent girls' programme listed by the Department of Women and Child Development, Haryana, among its schemes for women. The department states the objective directly: "To improve the nutritional and health status and self-development of girls in the age group of 11-18 years."

Kishori Shakti Yojana was designed as an adolescent-girl component riding on the existing Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) delivery system rather than as a standalone office network. That design matters for a reader trying to access it: there is no separate Kishori Shakti office, no portal login and no application form. The anganwadi centre in your village or ward is the point of contact.

The reasoning behind the scheme is straightforward. ICDS in Haryana, launched nationally in 1975, focuses on children aged 0 to 6 years and on pregnant and lactating mothers. Adolescent girls sit in the gap between those two groups: past the child-nutrition window, not yet in the maternal-nutrition window, and that is exactly the stage where anaemia, poor growth and school drop-out cluster. Kishori Shakti Yojana was built to close that gap.

Who is eligible for Kishori Shakti Yojana?

A girl can be enrolled if:

• She is aged 11 to 18 years, the age band the Haryana department specifies.
• She lives in the area served by the anganwadi centre where she registers.
• She is willing to attend the anganwadi centre for the nutrition, health and self-development activities organised for adolescent girls.

Who is not eligible:

• Boys cannot apply. The scheme is confined to adolescent girls.
• A girl below 11 years cannot apply under this head. Girls under 6 are covered by the main ICDS package at the same anganwadi centre.
• A girl aged over 18 is not eligible, and should be directed to schemes for adult women, skill training or the state's women's welfare programmes instead.
• A girl living outside the anganwadi centre's catchment area cannot register at that centre; she must approach the centre covering her own locality.
• A family cannot apply for a cash payment under this scheme, because no cash entitlement exists under it.

Where places or supplies are limited, out-of-school and undernourished adolescent girls are the priority group under the adolescent component of ICDS.

What does an adolescent girl actually receive?

Kishori Shakti Yojana works through the anganwadi centre, so the inputs an enrolled girl receives are the adolescent-focused parts of the ICDS package:

• Nutrition support, including supplementary nutrition provided through the anganwadi centre. Haryana's ICDS supplementary nutrition norms are fixed per beneficiary per day by category; Rs 6 per day for children, Rs 9 for severely malnourished children and Rs 7 for pregnant and lactating mothers, and the adolescent-girl rate applicable in your block should be confirmed with the Child Development Project Officer.
• Health check-ups and referral, using the same coordination between anganwadi workers, ANMs and medical officers that ICDS uses for growth monitoring and immunisation.
• Nutrition and health education, one of the six core ICDS services, covering anaemia, diet, hygiene and adolescent health.
• Self-development inputs, which is the element the scheme's own objective names, life skills, awareness of entitlements, and encouragement to continue or resume schooling.

Kishori Shakti Yojana pays no money into a bank account. Anyone promising a cash instalment under this name is misrepresenting it.

How to enrol a girl under Kishori Shakti Yojana

1. Locate your anganwadi centre. Every village and urban ward in Haryana is covered by an anganwadi centre under an ICDS project; ask a neighbour, the panchayat or the nearest school if you do not know where yours is.
2. Meet the anganwadi worker and say that you want the girl registered under the adolescent girls' programme, naming Kishori Shakti Yojana.
3. Carry proof of age, a birth certificate, school record or Aadhaar showing the girl is between 11 and 18 years — along with residence proof and the guardian's identity document.
4. Get the girl's name entered in the centre's register and note the registration details. Ask which days adolescent-girl activities are held.
5. Attend the sessions, since nutrition supply, health check-ups and self-development activities are delivered at the centre on scheduled days.
6. Escalate if refused. Approach the Child Development Project Officer of your block, and then the District Programme Officer, Women and Child Development, at the district headquarters.

Registration is free at every step.

What to confirm locally before you rely on this page

Kishori Shakti Yojana is a long-running programme whose adolescent-girl components have been reorganised more than once at the national level, and the Haryana department's dedicated scheme page was not reachable at the time of this check. Two things are therefore worth confirming at your block office rather than assuming:

• The current name and package. Your block may run the adolescent-girl component under a successor programme name while delivering the same services at the same anganwadi centre.
• The supplementary nutrition entitlement and its frequency for adolescent girls in your block, which the Child Development Project Officer can state exactly.

Everything on this page that is stated as fact comes from the Haryana Women and Child Development Department's own published material; where a figure specific to adolescent girls was not published, this guide says so rather than filling the gap.

Where to get help

• Anganwadi worker at your local centre, the first point of contact.
• Child Development Project Officer (CDPO) of your ICDS block, for refusals, missing supply and enrolment disputes.
• District Programme Officer, Women and Child Development, district-level escalation.
• Women Helpline 181, free, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and able to direct you to the right office.
• wcdhry.gov.in, the department's website listing its schemes for women and children.

No fee is payable to register an adolescent girl, and no official may demand one.

How to check your application status

Kishori Shakti Yojana has no portal, application ID or SMS-based tracking system, because there is no "application" in the usual sense: a girl is either entered in the anganwadi centre's register or she is not. There is nothing to look up online, and no reference number is issued at the time of enrolment. To check where things stand, use these channels instead:

• Ask the anganwadi worker directly. She maintains the register of adolescent girls covered under the ICDS adolescent component at her centre, and can confirm on the spot whether a girl's name has been entered and which sessions or supplementary nutrition she is due to receive.
• Check attendance and distribution records at the centre. Many anganwadi centres display or maintain a register of who attended nutrition, health or self-development sessions; a guardian can ask to see the entry for their girl.
• Escalate to the Child Development Project Officer (CDPO) of the block if the anganwadi worker is unavailable, has been transferred, or cannot confirm the enrolment. The CDPO's office holds block-level records for every anganwadi centre in its jurisdiction and can verify enrolment status even when the local worker's register is in dispute.
• Contact the District Programme Officer, Women and Child Development, if the block office does not respond. District offices consolidate ICDS records, including the adolescent-girl component, across all blocks in the district.
• Call Women Helpline 181 if none of the above resolves the query. The helpline is free, available 24 hours a day, and can direct a caller to the correct anganwadi, CDPO or district office rather than confirming enrolment itself.

Because everything runs on a physical, centre-level register rather than a database, the most reliable way to check status is always to ask in person at the point of registration first, and move up the chain (CDPO, then District Programme Officer) only if that does not work.

Common reasons for rejection

Kishori Shakti Yojana does not reject applications in the way a subsidy or cash-transfer scheme does; there is no scrutiny committee and no sanction order. In practice, however, a girl's enrolment can be refused or delayed at the anganwadi centre for specific, avoidable reasons:

• Age outside the 11 to 18 year band. This is the single hard eligibility rule the Haryana department states. A girl younger than 11 should instead be covered under the main ICDS child package, and a girl older than 18 falls outside the scheme entirely. The fix is to check the girl's age against her birth certificate, school record or Aadhaar before approaching the centre, and to redirect younger or older applicants to the correct programme rather than insisting on Kishori Shakti Yojana.
• Living outside the anganwadi centre's catchment area. Each anganwadi centre serves a defined village or ward, and a worker cannot enrol a girl who resides in another centre's area. The fix is to register at the anganwadi centre that actually covers the girl's home address, which can be confirmed with the panchayat or the CDPO if it is unclear.
• No proof of age produced. Since age is the only firm eligibility criterion, an anganwadi worker who cannot verify age from a birth certificate, school record or Aadhaar may decline to enter the girl in the register on the spot. Carrying at least one of these documents at the time of registration avoids this.
• Anganwadi worker vacancy or centre closure. In some areas the anganwadi worker's post is vacant, or the centre is temporarily non-functional, so no one is available to register new girls. This is not a rejection of the girl's eligibility; it should be escalated immediately to the CDPO, who is responsible for covering vacant centres.
• Confusion with a since-renamed or restructured programme. Because the adolescent-girl component under ICDS has been reorganised at the national level more than once, a worker unfamiliar with the "Kishori Shakti Yojana" name may say the scheme does not exist in that block. The fix is to describe the actual entitlement (nutrition, health check-ups and self-development activities for girls aged 11 to 18 through the anganwadi centre) rather than insisting on the name, and to ask the CDPO what the adolescent-girl component is currently called locally.
• Mistaking it for a cash scheme. Some families approach the anganwadi centre expecting a cash payment or scholarship and are turned away when told none exists. This is not a rejection of eligibility, it is a mismatch of expectations: Kishori Shakti Yojana delivers nutrition, health and training services only, with no bank transfer component.

In every case above except the age and catchment-area rules, the correct response is escalation, first to the CDPO and then to the District Programme Officer, Women and Child Development, rather than treating a local worker's refusal as final.