Shri Annapurna Rasoi Yojana

What is Shri Annapurna Rasoi Yojana?

Shri Annapurna Rasoi Yojana is the Rajasthan government's subsidised cooked-meal programme, run by the Local Self Government Department through urban local bodies across the state. The scheme sells a full plate of hot food for Rs 8 to anyone who walks in, and the state government pays the operating agency a grant of Rs 22 for every plate served.

Shri Annapurna Rasoi is the renamed continuation of Indira Rasoi Yojana, which began in August 2020 with the stated aim that no one in Rajasthan should sleep hungry. In January 2024 the state government renamed the scheme Shri Annapurna Rasoi Yojana, increased the plate size and raised the per-plate government grant from Rs 17 to Rs 22. Readers who search for the transliterated name Shri Annapurna Rasoi Yojana or the older Indira Rasoi are looking at the same network of kitchens.

According to the official portal, the scheme is designed to serve roughly 2.52 lakh people a day and about 9.21 crore meals a year, with an annual budget allocation of around Rs 250 crore.

What makes the scheme unusual

• There is no beneficiary list. Nobody is enrolled, and nobody is excluded.
• Food is served seated at a table, not handed out in a queue, which is a deliberate design choice to preserve dignity.
• Kitchens are located where hungry people already are; district hospitals, bus stands, railway stations, wholesale mandis and dense low-income settlements.
• Payment of Rs 8 is collected at the counter; the rest of the cost is settled by the urban local body directly with the operating agency.

What do you get in one plate?

Each Shri Annapurna Rasoi plate carries about 600 grams of food. The official composition is:

Under the earlier Indira Rasoi arrangement the plate was 450 grams. The increase to 600 grams came with the January 2024 renaming, and the grant increase from Rs 17 to Rs 22 per plate funds it.

Meals are served twice a day: lunch from 8:30 am to 3:00 pm and dinner from 5:00 pm to 9:00 pm. Each kitchen has a sanctioned number of plates per meal; broadly around 200 plates per meal in municipal corporation areas and around 100 plates per meal in municipal council and municipality areas, so a kitchen may close its counter early once that count is reached.

Who is eligible for Shri Annapurna Rasoi?

You can eat at an Annapurna Rasoi if: you are physically present at the kitchen during meal hours and can pay Rs 8. That is the entire test. The scheme was deliberately built without means-testing, so daily-wage workers, migrant labourers, rickshaw drivers, patients' attendants outside hospitals, students, homeless persons, senior citizens and travellers all use the same counter at the same price.

No one is barred on grounds of income, caste or domicile. Residents of other states and tourists are served at the same Rs 8 rate.

You cannot apply for a cash benefit under this scheme. Shri Annapurna Rasoi is not a Direct Benefit Transfer scheme; there is no money credited to any bank account, no application form and no sanction order for an individual. Anyone telling you that a fee will get your name "added to Annapurna Rasoi" is running a fraud, because there is no list to be added to.

Rural residents are not covered directly. The scheme runs through the Local Self Government Department, whose jurisdiction is urban local bodies. Villages without a municipality do not have Annapurna Rasoi kitchens, though a nearby town's kitchen serves anyone who reaches it.

What documents are required?

How to apply for a meal under Shri Annapurna Rasoi

Because Shri Annapurna Rasoi has no enrolment, the "application" is simply the act of reaching a kitchen. Follow these steps:

1. Open shreeannapurnarasoi.rajasthan.gov.in and use the kitchen locator to find the rasoi nearest to you, filtering by district and urban local body. If you cannot use the website, ask at the municipal office, the district hospital gate or the bus stand — kitchens are signposted in the state's standard orange-and-white branding.
2. Reach the kitchen inside meal hours: 8:30 am to 3:00 pm for lunch or 5:00 pm to 9:00 pm for dinner. Arriving in the first half of the window reduces the risk that the day's sanctioned plates are already exhausted.
3. Pay Rs 8 at the counter and collect your token or coupon. Keep the coupon until you are served.
4. Sit at the dining table and collect the plate. Refills of chapati or dal are at the operating agency's discretion and are not guaranteed by the scheme.
5. If the counter demands more than Rs 8, refuses to serve without a document, or serves a visibly short plate, note the kitchen name and complain on the state helpline 1800-1806-127.

How can an organisation apply to run an Annapurna Rasoi?

1. Approach the municipal commissioner (municipal corporation) or the executive officer (municipal council or municipality) of the town where you want to operate, and ask for the current expression-of-interest notice for rasoi operation.
2. Submit the organisation's registration papers, prior experience in community kitchen or food service work, kitchen infrastructure details and the proposed site, along with the Jan Aadhaar and bank details of the organisation.
3. If selected, sign the agreement with the urban local body, which fixes the sanctioned plate count per meal and the reimbursement mechanism.
4. Serve meals, record every plate on the scheme's monitoring application with a photograph of the beneficiary and the coupon number, and raise the monthly reimbursement claim of Rs 22 per verified plate with the urban local body.

Plate counts entered on the monitoring application are the basis of payment, so under-recording costs the operator money and over-recording triggers recovery after audit.

How is the subsidy paid and monitored?

Shri Annapurna Rasoi does not pay the beneficiary; it pays the kitchen. The operating agency collects Rs 8 per plate at the counter and claims Rs 22 per plate from the urban local body. Real-time entry of each meal on the scheme's monitoring system, with beneficiary photographs, is what allows the state to verify that the plates claimed were actually served. District collectors and urban local body officials conduct surprise inspections of food quality, quantity and hygiene.

The state dashboard on the official portal publishes cumulative and same-day beneficiary counts, so any citizen can see how many plates a district reported.

Common problems and how to fix them

• Kitchen closed during official hours; report the location and time to 1800-1806-127 or to the municipal office; repeated closures are a contractual default by the operator.
• Being asked for more than Rs 8. The beneficiary contribution is fixed at Rs 8 statewide. Any additional charge is unauthorised.
• Short or poor-quality plate, the 600-gram composition is a scheme standard, not a suggestion. Photograph the plate and complain.
• No kitchen in your town: new rasois are sanctioned by the Local Self Government Department on the urban local body's proposal. A written representation to the municipal chairperson is the correct route.

Grievance redressal and contacts

• State helpline: 1800-1806-127
• Official portal: shreeannapurnarasoi.rajasthan.gov.in
• Nodal officer: Deputy Director (Administration), Local Self Government Department, Government of Rajasthan
• Local escalation: municipal commissioner or executive officer of the concerned urban local body

Eating at an Annapurna Rasoi costs Rs 8 and nothing else. No official, agent or kitchen operator can charge a registration fee, and no document is required to be served.