Sambal Gram Yojana

What is Sambal Gram Yojana?

Sambal Gram Yojana is a Rajasthan area development scheme run by the Social Justice and Empowerment Department. Under Sambal Gram Yojana, the state selects villages with a heavy concentration of Scheduled Caste population and funds a package of basic infrastructure works in them, internal roads, drinking water, drainage, street lighting and community buildings.

The reasoning is a well-documented pattern in rural development. Villages and hamlets where Scheduled Caste households form the bulk of the population have historically received less of the ordinary village infrastructure spend, partly because such settlements are often physically set apart from the main village and partly because they carry less weight in local decision-making. General village development funds, distributed evenly across panchayats, do not close that gap. Sambal Gram Yojana closes it by aiming money at the specific villages where the deficit is concentrated.

The crucial thing for a reader to understand is what kind of scheme this is. Sambal Gram Yojana is not a personal benefit scheme. No individual receives cash, a device, a house or a scholarship under it. What arrives in a selected village is construction work.

Which villages are covered under Sambal Gram Yojana?

Sambal Gram Yojana covers villages where Scheduled Caste households form a large share of the population. The threshold commonly cited for selection is villages with roughly 40 per cent or more SC population. Selection is made district by district, from within the year's budget allocation, so eligibility on population criteria alone does not guarantee that a village is taken up in any given year.

A village can be considered if:

• It is a revenue village in Rajasthan with a high recorded concentration of Scheduled Caste households.
• It lacks one or more items of basic infrastructure, an all-weather internal road, a drinking water source, drainage, or a community building.
• The gram panchayat has passed a resolution identifying the works and a technical estimate exists for them.
• Funds sanctioned in an earlier round, if any, have been utilised and accounted for.

Individuals cannot apply and are not eligible for any personal payment under this scheme. A resident of a selected village benefits only in the sense that the road, drain or water line built in the village serves everybody in it. If you are looking for money in your own bank account, Sambal Gram Yojana is the wrong scheme: Rajasthan's individual-benefit schemes for Scheduled Caste families are separate and are described below.

What works are carried out under Sambal Gram Yojana?

The works taken up in a selected village typically include:

• Internal roads and cement-concrete lanes connecting the settlement to the main village and to the approach road.
• Drinking water arrangements: handpumps, a tube well, a water tank or an extension of the existing supply line into the settlement.
• Drainage and sanitation works, since standing waste water is the single most common complaint in dense settlements without drains.
• Street lighting on the internal lanes.
• Community buildings — a community hall or meeting space, and repairs to existing public buildings serving the settlement.

The mix for any village is decided by what the gram panchayat proposes and what the district sanctions. There is no fixed menu that every village receives.

How does a village get taken up under Sambal Gram Yojana?

1. Identify the village against the population criterion. The district administration works from census and revenue records to list villages in the district with a high Scheduled Caste population share.
2. Get a gram panchayat resolution passed listing the works the village needs, in priority order. This is the step where residents have real influence, because it is the panchayat meeting that decides what goes on the list. Raise your settlement's need. The lane, the drain, the water line: at that meeting.
3. Have technical estimates prepared for each proposed work by the panchayat engineer or the relevant line department.
4. Forward the proposal from the panchayat to the panchayat samiti and on to the district Social Justice and Empowerment officer, who consolidates district proposals.
5. Sanction and release of funds by the Social Justice and Empowerment Department, within the year's allocation for the scheme.
6. Execution and monitoring by the panchayat and the executing line department, with utilisation accounted for before a further sanction is made for the same village.

What if you want an individual benefit instead?

Readers who reach Sambal Gram Yojana looking for personal assistance are usually looking for one of these Rajasthan schemes, all of which do have individual application routes:

• Palanhar Yojana: monthly maintenance and education support for orphaned and vulnerable children, applied for through e-Mitra and the department's Palanhar portal.
• Scholarship schemes for Scheduled Caste students, applied for through the department's scholarship portal each academic year.
• Inter-caste marriage assistance, applied for through the SSO portal.
• Social security pensions, including the old-age, widow and disability pensions, applied for at e-Mitra.
• Atrocity relief, where compensation is processed by the district administration under the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.

Each of these is a separate scheme with its own eligibility, documents and timeline. Applying for Sambal Gram Yojana does not enrol you in any of them, and no official can move a personal claim through this scheme.

How to check whether works were sanctioned in your village

Sanctions and works under state schemes are public information. The practical routes are:

• Ask the gram panchayat for the resolution and the sanction letter. A panchayat is required to display sanctioned works and expenditure.
• Approach the panchayat samiti or the district Social Justice and Empowerment officer for the district's sanctioned list.
• Use the Jan Soochna portal (jansoochna.rajasthan.gov.in), Rajasthan's public information platform, which publishes scheme and beneficiary information across departments.
• File an RTI application with the district office if the information is refused.

Where to complain about Sambal Gram Yojana works

• Rajasthan Sampark helpline: 181, which issues a trackable complaint number.
• Rajasthan Sampark portal for a written complaint about incomplete, substandard or unstarted work.
• District Social Justice and Empowerment officer, who holds the sanction record for the district.
• District Collector, for escalation where the district office does not act.

The most effective complaint quotes the sanction number and the work name from the panchayat record, because a complaint that names a specific sanctioned work is verifiable in a way that a general complaint about the village is not.