Scheme for Mentally Retarded and Disabled Children (HP Building and Other Construction Workers Welfare Board)

What is the HP BOCW Board's benefit for mentally challenged and disabled children?

The Scheme for Mentally Retarded and Disabled Children; mansik roop se mand / apang bachchon ke liye yojana in the Board's own Hindi scheme table; is an annual cash benefit of the Himachal Pradesh Building and Other Construction Workers Welfare Board. The Board is the statutory body constituted under the Building and Other Construction Workers (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1996, works under the Labour and Employment Department of the Government of Himachal Pradesh, and is financed from the labour cess levied on construction work in the state.

The benefit is Rule 299 of the Board's consolidated welfare schemes notification published on bocw.hp.gov.in. According to that notification, the Board provides Rs 20,000 every year for the care of the mentally challenged or physically disabled children of a registered beneficiary.

The purpose is narrow and specific. Caring for a child with an intellectual or physical disability imposes recurring costs: therapy sessions, special schooling, mobility aids, medicines and travel to a district or regional centre, and it also removes an adult from paid work for part of the week. For a household whose income is a construction daily wage, either pressure alone is severe. The Board's payment is an annual contribution towards that ongoing care rather than a one-off grant, which is why it is expressed in the scheme table as a per-year amount.

Rule 299 sits alongside two other heads that a family in this position will often be able to draw on at the same time:

• Medical assistance (Rule 280) reimburses treatment bills at government or government-approved hospitals up to Rs 50,000 a year for outdoor treatment, Rs 1,00,000 for indoor treatment and Rs 5,00,000 for a serious illness, for the registered worker and their dependants.
• Education assistance (Rule 281) carries a special disability strand: for up to two children of a worker, a child with 50 per cent or more disability receives Rs 5,000 a year in Classes 1 to 8, Rs 10,000 in Classes 9 to 12, Rs 15,000 for a graduate degree or diploma, Rs 25,000 for a postgraduate degree or diploma and Rs 35,000 for a professional degree or PhD.

A family should read all three together rather than assume Rule 299 is the only route.

Who is eligible for this benefit in Himachal Pradesh?

You can claim if:

• You are a building or other construction worker registered with the HP BOCW Welfare Board and your registration is live.
• You have a child who is mentally challenged or physically disabled.
• You hold a disability certificate for the child from the competent medical authority.
• Your contribution to the Board fund is up to date, so membership has not lapsed.

The eligibility condition recorded against Rule 299 in the Board's scheme table is simply sadasyata, membership. No separate waiting period is printed against this head, unlike Rule 282 for marriage assistance and Rule 271 for maternity and paternity benefit, where the Board requires two months of membership.

The Board's registration rule, printed on its portal, is that a worker aged 18 to 60 who has done at least 90 days of building or other construction work in the previous 12 months may register. Those 90 days may include private construction work as well as work executed by the government or a panchayat. The registration fee is Rs 1 once, with Rs 9 deposited in advance as contribution valid for three years from registration and Rs 15 for the next three years — among the lowest entry costs of any welfare board in the country. Registration requires two passport photographs, one age proof from the Board's accepted list, and a wage slip or appointment letter from the employer or contractor; where no such certificate is available, a certificate from the executive officer of the urban local body, the ward councillor or the panchayat secretary is considered.

You cannot apply if:

• You are not registered with the HP BOCW Welfare Board. There is no route to the Rs 20,000 outside registration.
• Your registration has lapsed because contribution was not deposited and no renewal has been done.
• You cannot produce a disability certificate for the child from a competent medical authority.
• The child's relationship to you is not on record, and no parivar register extract, birth certificate or family record is attached.
• You work at a construction project only in a managerial, administrative or supervisory capacity, which is outside the statutory definition of a building worker under Section 2(d) of the 1996 Act.
• You have not deposited the annual 90-day wage slip at the Labour Office, which the Board requires to keep membership continuous and to release assistance.

How much is paid, and how often?

Payment is made by transfer into the registered worker's own bank account rather than through any institution or intermediary. The account details captured at registration therefore need to be current: if you have changed banks since registering, use the Update Beneficiary page on the portal before you file, because a closed or dormant account causes a sanctioned payment to bounce back to the Board and restarts the paperwork.

Rates under the Board's schemes are fixed by Board resolution and revised from time to time. Rs 20,000 is the figure in the consolidated welfare schemes notification currently published on bocw.hp.gov.in, and the notification itself carries a footnote asking beneficiaries to confirm the latest position with their Labour Officer or on the Board's website.

What documents are required?

How to apply for the HP BOCW disabled children benefit

1. Get the child's disability certificate. Have the child assessed by the competent medical authority, normally the medical board at the district hospital, and make sure the certificate records the nature of the condition and the percentage of disability in figures. The percentage also decides entitlement under the separate education strand at Rule 281, which begins at 50 per cent.
2. Confirm your registration is live. Open bocw.hp.gov.in and use Find BeneficiaryId and Check Status. If contribution is overdue, clear it through Online Renewal and Deposit Fee, or deposit it in one of the Board's designated bank accounts and tell your Labour Welfare Officer so the credit is posted against your record.
3. Complete Aadhaar verification on the Beneficiary Aadhaar Verification page. The Board's public notice states that verifying the beneficiary's Aadhaar through the portal is compulsory to take the benefit of any welfare scheme, and it works only where Aadhaar is linked to your mobile number.
4. Open the "Apply For Benefits" page, enter your Beneficiary ID and date of birth, and select the head under Rule 299.
5. Upload the documents through the Upload Registration Documents page. Scan the disability certificate cleanly. An illegible percentage is the fastest way to have the claim returned.
6. Submit and save the acknowledgement number, then follow the claim up with the District Labour Welfare Officer, who verifies it before the Board sanctions payment.

Because the payment is annual, keep the file: the following year's claim needs the same set of papers, plus a fresh 90-day wage slip and, where the disability certificate was issued for a limited period, a revalidated certificate.

How to apply offline

1. Visit the District or Sub-Divisional Labour Welfare Officer having jurisdiction over the place where you are registered. The Board's note on welfare schemes directs a beneficiary depositing contribution regularly to send benefit applications to that office.
2. Ask for the claim form for benefits under Rule 299; Hindi and English forms are also downloadable from the Downloads section of bocw.hp.gov.in.
3. Fill the form, attach self-attested copies of the registration card, the child's disability certificate, the family record, Aadhaar, bank passbook and contribution receipt, and submit it against a dated receipt.
4. The office verifies the registration and the certificate and forwards the case to the Board for sanction.

Families in Lahaul-Spiti, Kinnaur, Chamba and Sirmaur often route the paper claim through the labour inspector covering the block rather than travelling twice to district headquarters, which matters when a disabled child cannot easily be left at home.

How do you check the status of a claim?

1. Open bocw.hp.gov.in and select Check Status.
2. Enter your Beneficiary ID and date of birth.
3. Read the stage shown, filed, under verification, sanctioned or paid.

If you do not know your Beneficiary ID, the Find BeneficiaryId page retrieves it. The portal's public counters, 1,92,134 applications received, 76,215 approved, 1,15,152 pending across all Board services, show that some weeks at the verification stage is normal.

Why these claims get rejected

• Registration lapsed because contribution was not deposited. This is the largest single cause across all Board benefits.
• No 90-day wage slip deposited for the year, so membership is not treated as continuous.
• Disability certificate missing, expired or without a percentage.
• Certificate issued by an authority not competent to assess disability.
• Relationship to the child not documented.
• Name mismatch between Aadhaar, the Board record and the bank account, which stops the transfer even after sanction.
• Bank account closed or dormant, so the credit bounces back.
• Aadhaar verification not completed on the portal.

Most of these are curable. A lapsed registration can be renewed and the claim refiled; a name mismatch is corrected on the Update Beneficiary page before resubmission.

Where do you complain if the claim is stuck?

• HP BOCW Welfare Board head office: Old SDM Office, Hamirpur 177001, phone 01972-222411, email hpbocwwboard@gmail.com.
• District Labour Welfare Officer of your district, in writing, quoting the acknowledgement number and date of filing.
• e-Samadhan, the Himachal Pradesh online public grievance portal, linked from the top of the Board's home page.
• Himachal Pradesh CM Helpline 1100 for a general escalation.

No agent's fee is payable for filing a Board claim. Registration costs Rs 1 plus Rs 9 advance contribution, claim forms are free at the Labour Welfare Office and downloadable from the portal, and no Board official will ask for your OTP.