NAMO Shree Scheme

What is the NAMO Shree Scheme?

NAMO Shree Scheme is a maternity and nutrition assistance scheme of the Women and Child Development Department, Government of Gujarat, delivered through the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) network of anganwadi centres. The scheme was announced in the Gujarat state budget for 2024-25, alongside NAMO Lakshmi and NAMO Saraswati, as part of a group of schemes aimed at women and girls. It is also written as NAMO Shri Yojana in Gujarati-language material.

According to the Women and Child Development Department, NAMO Shree Scheme provides Rs 12,000 in assistance to pregnant women and lactating mothers from scheduled caste, scheduled tribe and below-poverty-line families. The money is intended to cover the extra nutrition a woman needs during pregnancy and lactation, and to remove the wage-loss reason that pushes women towards home delivery instead of an institutional one.

What the scheme is trying to fix

• Maternal undernutrition. Gujarat's own WCD material notes that "women need extra nutrition during pregnancy period", and the first 1,000 days from conception is the window the department targets across its nutrition schemes.
• Low birth weight, which follows directly from a poorly nourished mother.
• Home deliveries, which carry far higher risk to both mother and newborn than a delivery at a health facility.
• Wage loss, because a woman in a daily-wage household who stops work in late pregnancy loses income exactly when she needs to eat more.

NAMO Shree sits alongside the department's other maternal nutrition programmes: Mukhyamantri Matrushakti Yojana, Poshan Sudha, Mission Poshan and the Doodh Sanjivani milk scheme; rather than replacing them. Matrushakti and Poshan Sudha give food and take-home rations; NAMO Shree gives cash.

Who is eligible for the NAMO Shree Scheme?

You can be registered if:

• You are a resident of Gujarat.
• You are pregnant or a lactating mother and your pregnancy is registered at an anganwadi centre or a government health facility.
• Your household falls in one of the notified categories, scheduled caste, scheduled tribe, or a below-poverty-line / economically weaker household.
• You hold a Mother and Child Protection (MCP) card and attend the antenatal check-ups recorded on it.
• You have a bank account in your own name for the direct benefit transfer.

You cannot be registered if:

• You are not a resident of Gujarat, or the pregnancy is registered in another state.
• Your household is outside the notified caste and income categories. The scheme is targeted, not universal, so an above-BPL general-category household is not eligible on that basis alone.
• The pregnancy was never registered at an anganwadi or health facility, so there is no MCP record to link the instalments to.
• The bank account offered is not in the mother's own name, which blocks the DBT credit.

Because the eligible categories are notified by the state and can be revised, the single most reliable check is to ask your anganwadi worker to confirm your category against the current list before you assemble documents.

What documents are required?

How to apply for the NAMO Shree Scheme

1. Register the pregnancy early at your local anganwadi centre, ideally in the first trimester. Ask the anganwadi worker (AWW) to enter the pregnancy on the ICDS record and issue or update your MCP card.
2. Tell the anganwadi worker you want to be enrolled under NAMO Shree and show your category document — caste certificate, BPL ration card or income certificate, along with Aadhaar and proof of Gujarat residence.
3. Open or confirm a bank account in your own name and hand over a passbook copy. Check that the name on the passbook matches Aadhaar exactly; a mismatched surname is the commonest reason a transfer fails.
4. Attend the antenatal check-ups recorded on the MCP card. Instalments under maternity schemes are linked to these milestones, so a missed check-up can hold up a payment.
5. Deliver at a government or recognised health facility and obtain the delivery record or birth certificate.
6. Submit the delivery record to the anganwadi worker so that the final instalment can be processed.
7. Follow up with the anganwadi worker or the CDPO office if a credit does not appear within a few weeks of a completed milestone.

There is no public self-service website for NAMO Shree. The anganwadi centre is the application counter, and the supervisory chain runs upward through the CDPO (Child Development Project Officer) at block level and the District Programme Officer for ICDS.

How is the money paid?

Assistance under NAMO Shree is paid by direct benefit transfer into the mother's own bank account, in instalments tied to pregnancy registration, antenatal care and delivery rather than in one lump sum. Nothing is handed over in cash at the anganwadi centre. If someone asks for cash to "process" the file, that is not part of the scheme.

Keep a note of the dates on which each milestone was recorded on your MCP card. When an instalment is late, that card is the evidence that the milestone was completed, and it is what the CDPO office will ask to see.

Why payments get delayed

• Name mismatch between Aadhaar and the bank passbook.
• Account not Aadhaar-seeded, so the DBT push fails at the bank end.
• Joint account or husband's account given instead of the mother's own.
• Pregnancy registered late, so early milestones cannot be certified.
• Missing category document. The caste or BPL proof not attached to the file.
• Delivery record not submitted to the anganwadi worker after the birth.
• Dormant or KYC-incomplete bank account, which the bank will reject.

Most of these are fixable at the anganwadi level within days. Take the original documents to the worker rather than sending photocopies through someone else.

Where to get help

• Anganwadi centre and anganwadi worker; first stop for registration and for any stuck instalment.
• CDPO office at block level, and the District Programme Officer (ICDS), the escalation route above the anganwadi.
• Women and Child Development Department, Gandhinagar: 079-232-57942.
• 181 Abhayam, Gujarat's women's helpline, for urgent help and referral.
• wcd.gujarat.gov.in for the department's scheme pages and district contacts.

Registration under NAMO Shree is free, and the assistance is credited only to the mother's own bank account.