Rajiv Gandhi Scheme for Empowerment of Adolescent Girls (SABLA), Haryana

What was SABLA in Haryana?

SABLA; formally the Rajiv Gandhi Scheme for Empowerment of Adolescent Girls (RGSEAG): was a centrally sponsored programme launched on 1 April 2011 by the Ministry of Women and Child Development and implemented in Haryana by the Women and Child Development Department through the Anganwadi network.

SABLA merged two earlier programmes, the Kishori Shakti Yojana and the Nutrition Programme for Adolescent Girls, into a single scheme for adolescent girls aged 11 to 18 registered under ICDS projects. Its purpose was blunt: adolescence is where a girl's nutrition, schooling and autonomy all break down at once in much of north India, and the Anganwadi centre was the one institution already present in every village that could reach her.

The original SABLA scheme was discontinued with effect from 31 March 2022. A revised Scheme for Adolescent Girls was introduced and subsumed under Saksham Anganwadi and Poshan 2.0. Adolescent girl services continue in Haryana. The name, the age focus and the funding umbrella changed.

How was SABLA rolled out in Haryana?

Haryana implemented SABLA in six pilot districts first: Ambala, Yamunanagar, Rohtak, Rewari, Kaithal and Hisar, before extending it to all districts of the state. The state's stated aim was to facilitate education and empowerment of out-of-school adolescent girls, with particular attention to the 11-to-14 age band where dropout is heaviest.

That out-of-school focus is the thread that survived the 2022 restructuring. The revised scheme keeps out-of-school girls as the primary target group and moves the age focus to 14 to 18 years.

Who is eligible for adolescent girl services in Haryana?

A girl can be registered if:

• She is an adolescent girl registered at an Anganwadi centre in Haryana.
• She falls in the covered age band. Under old SABLA this was 11 to 18 years; under the revised Scheme for Adolescent Girls the primary target is 14 to 18 years.
• She is out of school, which the revised scheme treats as the priority category. In-school girls were covered under the original SABLA design and are reached through school health and nutrition programmes.
• Her family resides in Haryana and holds a Parivar Pehchan Patra.

A girl is not eligible if:

• She is below 11 or above 18 years. Younger children are covered by ICDS services for the 0-to-6 group; above 18 she moves to adult schemes.
• She is not registered at any Anganwadi centre, which is the practical gate for every service described here.
• The family lives outside Haryana.
• She is looking specifically for old SABLA benefits. Those were discontinued on 31 March 2022 and cannot be claimed retrospectively.

There is no income or caste test. The scheme is universal within its age and schooling criteria.

What did SABLA provide, and what continues today?

SABLA was built on two service packages.

Nutrition component

• Supplementary nutrition through the Anganwadi centre, designed to close the calorie and protein gap in adolescence.
• Iron and Folic Acid (IFA) supplementation, aimed directly at anaemia, which is the single most prevalent nutrition problem among adolescent girls in Haryana.
• Under the revised scheme, take-home ration providing 600 calories and 18 to 20 grams of protein per day, for 300 days a year.

Non-nutrition component

• Health check-ups and referral services through the ANM and the PHC.
• Nutrition and health education (NHED).
• Awareness on health, hygiene, nutrition, adolescent reproductive and sexual health, and family and child care.
• Life-skills education and guidance on accessing public services.
• Home-based skills and vocational training, and the effort to mainstream out-of-school girls into formal or non-formal education.

Beneficiaries under the revised scheme are tracked on the Poshan Tracker application. In its first year, 2022-23, about 22.70 lakh adolescent girls aged 14 to 18 were registered nationally on the app.

Why the age focus moved from 11-18 to 14-18

The narrowing was deliberate, and understanding it saves a family a wasted trip.

SABLA covered 11 to 18 because it inherited that band from the Kishori Shakti Yojana. In practice, girls aged 11 to 14 are overwhelmingly still in school, and the Right to Education Act makes schooling compulsory to 14. Reaching them through the Anganwadi centre duplicated what the school system was already doing through mid-day meals and school health check-ups.

The gap sits after 14. That is where dropout accelerates, where the school nutrition system stops covering a girl who has left, and where anaemia and early marriage risk climb. The revised Scheme for Adolescent Girls under Saksham Anganwadi and Poshan 2.0 therefore targets out-of-school girls aged 14 to 18. The group that no other programme reaches.

Coverage under the revised scheme was initially concentrated in Aspirational Districts and the North Eastern states, including Assam. A family in Haryana should therefore confirm with the Anganwadi Supervisor what is currently operational in its own block rather than assuming universal coverage, because the geographic scope of the revised scheme is narrower than old SABLA's all-district reach in Haryana.

Girls aged 11 to 14 who are in school continue to receive weekly Iron and Folic Acid supplementation and health check-ups through the school health programme. Girls aged 11 to 14 who are out of school should be brought to the Anganwadi centre and to the education department's bridge-course route regardless of scheme labels, because getting her back into a classroom is the outcome every version of this scheme was written to produce.

How to register for adolescent girl services in Haryana

1. Go to your Anganwadi centre. Every village and urban ward in Haryana is mapped to one. Ask the ASHA worker or the panchayat if you do not know where yours is.
2. Ask for registration under the Scheme for Adolescent Girls (Poshan 2.0). Do not ask for SABLA by name — many workers will simply say the scheme has ended, which is technically correct and practically unhelpful.
3. Carry proof of age, the Parivar Pehchan Patra and Aadhaar. Age proof decides the band; the Family ID and Aadhaar drive the Poshan Tracker entry.
4. State the girl's school status. Out-of-school girls are the priority category under the revised scheme, so this is recorded at registration.
5. Confirm the Poshan Tracker entry has been made. Registration on the app is what puts the girl into the count that drives take-home ration supply to the centre.
6. Collect take-home ration on distribution days and attend the health check-up and IFA rounds held at the centre.

There is no application form to buy, no fee, and no online portal. Any agent charging for enrolment is running a fraud.

Why registrations fail, and what to do

• "The scheme is closed." Partly true; old SABLA is closed. Ask instead for the Scheme for Adolescent Girls under Poshan 2.0.
• Age proof missing. A school record, birth certificate or Aadhaar all work. Without one, the age band cannot be established.
• Poshan Tracker registration stuck. App glitches have been reported in Haryana. Escalate to the Supervisor or the Child Development Project Officer rather than dropping the enrolment.
• Girl is in school and is turned away. The revised scheme prioritises out-of-school girls. In-school girls should be routed through the school health programme and the weekly IFA supplementation run in schools.
• Take-home ration not supplied. Raise it with the Supervisor and then the Child Development Project Officer of the block.

Where to complain or ask for help

• Anganwadi Supervisor, then the Child Development Project Officer of your ICDS block, the first two escalation levels.
• District Programme Officer (Women and Child Development) at the district headquarters.
• Director, Women and Child Development Haryana to 0172-2560349, Bays 15-20, Sector 4, Panchkula 134112.
• Women Helpline 181 and Child Helpline 1098, both toll-free.
• Departmental website: wcdhry.gov.in.

An honest note on this page: SABLA as a named scheme no longer exists, and a reader searching for it is usually looking for adolescent girl nutrition and life-skills support that does still exist under a different name. That substitution, ask for Poshan 2.0's Scheme for Adolescent Girls, not for SABLA; is the single most useful thing to take from this guide.

How to check your registration and benefit status

There is no application number and no online tracking portal for this scheme, so "checking status" here means confirming two separate things: that the girl's registration actually reached the Poshan Tracker system, and that the Anganwadi centre is receiving her take-home ration allotment.

1. Ask the Anganwadi Worker directly whether the girl's entry is visible on Poshan Tracker. The app is what the Anganwadi Worker uses at the centre; a family cannot log into it themselves, so the worker is the only checkpoint for this.
2. If the worker cannot confirm it, go to the Anganwadi Supervisor for the sector, who oversees several centres and can look up whether the registration synced correctly. A registration that was noted in a paper register but never entered on the app will not generate ration supply, so this step matters more than it looks.
3. If the Supervisor cannot resolve it, escalate to the Child Development Project Officer (CDPO) of the ICDS block. The CDPO holds the block-level view of which centres and which beneficiaries are current on the app.
4. For a registration that has been confirmed but ration or IFA supply has still not started, the same escalation chain applies: Anganwadi Worker, then Supervisor, then CDPO, before going to the District Programme Officer.
5. To confirm nothing has changed at the policy level (coverage area, age band, or whether the revised scheme is currently operating in a given block), call the Director, Women and Child Development Haryana at 0172-2560349, or check wcdhry.gov.in, since the revised scheme's district-level rollout has not matched old SABLA's all-Haryana coverage.

Because distribution runs on a fixed schedule at the centre rather than a one-off disbursal, the practical "status" that matters most is whether the girl's name appears on the current distribution list at her own Anganwadi centre, not a reference number anywhere else.