Indira Gandhi Pyari Behna Sukh-Samman Nidhi Yojana

What is Indira Gandhi Pyari Behna Sukh-Samman Nidhi Yojana?

Indira Gandhi Pyari Behna Sukh-Samman Nidhi Yojana is a state scheme of the Government of Himachal Pradesh that pays Rs 1,500 every month to eligible women between 18 and 59 years of age. The scheme is run by the Department of Social Justice and Empowerment through the Directorate for Empowerment of SC's, OBC's, Minorities Affairs and the Specially Abled, whose office is at Block No. 33, SDA Complex, Kasumpti, Shimla-9.

The scheme is listed on the directorate's website under Welfare Schemes, State Schemes, and the governing notification along with a later corrigendum is published there as a downloadable PDF. Locally the scheme is spoken of simply as the "Pyari Behna Yojana", and search results in Hindi often use that shorter name.

The stated purpose is recognition rather than relief. Himachal Pradesh's position is that women carry an unmeasured load of household work, care of children and the elderly, farm and orchard labour, and the preservation of community and cultural life, and that none of this appears in a pay slip. The Rs 1,500 monthly payment is framed as a Sukh-Samman Nidhi, a dignity fund, credited to the woman herself rather than to a household head.

Key features

• Rs 1,500 per month, Rs 18,000 per year, with no instalment structure.
• Paid by Direct Benefit Transfer into the woman's own bank account.
• Covers women aged 18 to 59 who are permanent residents of Himachal Pradesh.
• Applied for offline only, through the welfare officer at tehsil or district level.
• Eligibility is tested at the level of the whole family, not the individual.

Who can get Indira Gandhi Pyari Behna Sukh-Samman Nidhi Yojana?

You are covered if:

• You are a woman aged between 18 and 59 years.
• You are a permanent resident of Himachal Pradesh and can produce a bonafide Himachali or domicile certificate.
• You hold a bank account in your own name that is seeded with your Aadhaar.
• No member of your family falls in any of the excluded categories listed below.

Buddhist nuns who permanently reside at a monastery in Himachal Pradesh form a specific covered group. They draw the same Rs 1,500 per month and satisfy the residence test by attaching a certificate or letter from the Chief Chomo of the monastery instead of the usual family-register route.

You are not eligible if any member of your family is:

• A central or state government employee or pensioner.
• A contractual, outsourced or daily-wage employee of the government.
• Serving or retired security forces personnel, and widows of such personnel.
• An Anganwadi worker or Anganwadi helper.
• An ASHA worker.
• A mid-day meal worker or multi-task worker.
• An existing social security pension beneficiary, which covers old-age, widow and disability pensioners.
• An employee of a Panchayati Raj institution or a municipal corporation, council or Nagar Panchayat.
• An employee or pensioner of a public sector undertaking or a board.
• An income tax payee.
• A GST-registered person.

The most misunderstood point in this list is that it is a family test. A woman with no income of her own is still outside the scheme if her husband is a government pensioner or her son is registered under GST. This is why the parivar register copy is a mandatory document: it defines who counts as family for the purpose of the check.

Women aged 60 and above are outside the scheme by design. At 60 a woman becomes eligible for the state's old-age social security pension, and Himachal Pradesh does not pay the Sukh-Samman Nidhi alongside it.

Kinnaur district has been dealt with separately, with terms notified to take effect from 1 April 2026 setting a qualifying age of 21 years and above and an annual family income ceiling below Rs 2 lakh. Applicants in Kinnaur should ask the District Welfare Officer which set of conditions applies to their form before filling it.

What documents are required?

Keep a photocopy set of everything you submit. Because there is no online status tracker, your own file is the only record you control.

How to apply for Indira Gandhi Pyari Behna Sukh-Samman Nidhi Yojana

1. Collect the application form from the office of the Tehsil Welfare Officer or the District Welfare Officer. The form is also published as a downloadable PDF in the Downloadable Forms section of the directorate website, esomsa.hp.gov.in, so you can print it at home or at a common service centre.
2. Fill the form in full, entering your name exactly as it appears on your Aadhaar card, your date of birth, your permanent address in Himachal Pradesh, and your bank account number and IFSC code.
3. Complete the declaration about family exclusions. Tick each category honestly. This declaration is what the department relies on, and a wrong entry here is the usual cause of later recovery.
4. Attach self-attested copies of the bonafide certificate, age proof, Aadhaar card, bank passbook first page, and the ration card or parivar register copy. Buddhist nuns attach the Chief Chomo certificate as well.
5. Submit the complete file to the Tehsil Welfare Officer or District Welfare Officer, and collect a dated acknowledgement. Do not leave the office without it.
6. Wait for verification. The Tehsil or District Welfare Officer conducts the initial check, cross-referencing your family details against the exclusion list, and forwards the verified list to the directorate.
7. Check your bank account once the sanction is issued. The first credit of Rs 1,500 arrives directly in your account, and no separate collection or counter visit is needed.

There is no online application route for this scheme. Any website or agent that offers to "register you online" for the Pyari Behna Yojana for a fee is not acting for the department.

How is the money paid?

Indira Gandhi Pyari Behna Sukh-Samman Nidhi Yojana pays Rs 1,500 per month by Direct Benefit Transfer. The credit lands in the woman's own bank account. The department does not route the payment through a husband's or a joint account, and this is deliberate, since the point of the scheme is that the money is the woman's own.

Two account-level problems account for most missing credits. The first is a bank account that has not been Aadhaar-seeded, which means the DBT instruction cannot be matched to the account. The second is a name mismatch between the Aadhaar record and the bank record, often a maiden name left unchanged after marriage or an initial spelt differently. Both are fixed at the bank branch, not at the welfare office.

Why applications get rejected, and how to fix them

• A family member in an excluded category. This is the single largest cause. If a family member has retired from government service or has taken a GST registration since you applied, the case fails on verification.
• Age outside the 18 to 59 band on the date of application, or an age proof that does not agree with the Aadhaar record.
• No bonafide Himachali certificate, or a certificate in a maiden name that no longer matches the other documents.
• Bank account not in the applicant's own name. A joint account or a husband's account will not be accepted.
• Aadhaar not seeded to the bank account, so the transfer fails even after sanction.
• Parivar register copy not attached, leaving the department unable to verify the family composition.

The remedy in almost every case is to correct the specific document and resubmit through the same welfare officer rather than start a fresh file. Ask the officer to note on your acknowledgement which document was found deficient, so that the resubmission is treated as a continuation.

Where to raise a complaint

Grievances go up the same chain the application travels. Start with the Tehsil Welfare Officer, then the District Welfare Officer, and then the Directorate for Empowerment of SC's, OBC's, Minorities Affairs and the Specially Abled, Block No. 33, SDA Complex, Kasumpti, Shimla-9, Himachal Pradesh.

For queries about the form itself, the directorate publishes the contact numbers 0177-3525101 and 0177-3525102. Website problems, such as a notification PDF that will not download, go to the Web Information Manager at +91-177-2623006.

The notification and the corrigendum for the scheme are both published on the directorate's scheme page. If a welfare office and you disagree about a condition, printing the notification and the corrigendum and taking them with you is the fastest way to settle the question, because the corrigendum changed parts of the original text and older photocopies circulating locally may not reflect it.

Applying is free. The department charges nothing for the form, the submission or the verification, and no official will ask you for an OTP on your Aadhaar-linked mobile number.