Maintenance Allowance for Leprosy Affected Persons

What is the Maintenance Allowance for Leprosy Affected Persons?

Maintenance Allowance for Leprosy Affected Persons is the monthly cash benefit paid by the Department for the Welfare of Differently Abled Persons, Government of Tamil Nadu, to persons whose lives have been disabled by leprosy. It is not a separate scheme with its own budget line. It is one of the six eligible categories inside Tamil Nadu's Maintenance Allowance, which is the largest cash scheme the department runs.

The department states the design plainly: "To support the livelihood of the differently abled persons, a maintenance allowance of Rs.2000/- per month is provided to differently abled persons based on medical certificate without considering the income level."

Two features make this among the most accessible welfare payments in India:

• No income test at all. There is no income certificate to obtain, no BPL condition, no ration card colour requirement. The medical certificate decides everything. For leprosy affected persons, many of whom were pushed out of work and family life decades ago, the absence of an income test removes the paperwork most likely to defeat them.
• A fixed payment date. The department ensures the amount reaches the beneficiary's account directly through Direct Benefit Transfer, before the 5th of every month.

Who is eligible for the leprosy maintenance allowance, and who is not eligible?

The department publishes a single eligibility table for all six maintenance allowance categories. Leprosy affected persons appear as the sixth:

You can apply if:

• You are a leprosy affected person with disability certified at 40 per cent and above.
• You hold a disability certificate from the appropriate certifying medical authority.
• You are a resident of Tamil Nadu and apply through an e-Sevai centre in your district.
• You hold a bank account that can be seeded with Aadhaar for Direct Benefit Transfer.

Your income is irrelevant. So is your age, your community, your employment status and whether anyone else in your household draws a pension.

You cannot claim this allowance if:

• Your leprosy-related disability is assessed below 40 per cent. You are not eligible at that assessment, and the practical step is to seek reassessment at a medical board if the impairment has progressed.
• You have no disability certificate. The scheme is built entirely on the medical certificate, so an application without one cannot be processed.
• You live outside Tamil Nadu.
• You are already drawing the same maintenance allowance under another category. A beneficiary receives one maintenance allowance, not one per category.

What the scheme costs the state

The scale of the maintenance allowance explains why it is administered so tightly:

• 2024-25 expenditure: Rs 57,679.23 lakh, benefiting 2,50,987 beneficiaries across all six categories.
• 2025-26 Budget Estimate: Rs 66,141.64 lakh, which points to continued growth in coverage.

At Rs 2,000 a month, the 11,483 leprosy affected beneficiaries recorded in 2024-25 account for roughly Rs 27.6 crore a year of that total.

How to apply for the leprosy maintenance allowance

1. Get the disability certificate. Certificates are issued by the appropriate certifying authority through the medical boards at Government Medical College Hospitals, District Headquarters Hospitals, Taluk and non-Taluk hospitals, and at special camps. The State Resource cum Training Centres at Chennai and Tiruchirappalli also issue disability certificates. Ensure the certificate records the leprosy-related disability at 40 per cent and above.
2. Obtain the National Identity Card for the Differently Abled. The District Differently Abled Welfare Office issues this card to persons with 40 per cent and above disability on the strength of the disability certificate. The Unique Disability Identification card is generated through swavlambancard.gov.in; 8,94,220 UDID cards had been generated and delivered as on 31 March 2025.
3. Open or confirm a bank account in your own name and get it seeded with Aadhaar, since the allowance is paid only by Direct Benefit Transfer.
4. Visit the e-Sevai centre nearest your residence and file the maintenance allowance application. The department specifies this route: "the beneficiary has to submit application through e-sevai centre located near to his/her residence."
5. Submit the disability certificate, National Identity Card or UDID card, Aadhaar, bank passbook, residence proof and photograph at the centre, and collect the acknowledgement carrying the application number.
6. Wait for scrutiny. The applications are scrutinised by the District Differently Abled Welfare Officers before sanction.
7. Check your bank account from the 5th of the month after sanction.

What documents are required?

No income certificate is required, because the scheme has no income condition.

What else Tamil Nadu provides leprosy affected persons

The maintenance allowance is the cash arm of a wider set of provisions:

Ten Government Rehabilitation Homes for leprosy cured persons function across the state. The department explains that physical rehabilitation of leprosy affected persons involves identifying nerve function impairment, monitoring it and preventing further deterioration. Persons abandoned by their families are admitted for rehabilitation, and family members of leprosy affected persons can also be admitted.

In these homes residents are helped to regain independence and to take part in daily activities. During their stay they are provided with free food, accommodation, medical treatment, two sets of clothing and MCR chappals — the microcellular rubber footwear that protects insensate feet from the ulcers that cause most leprosy-related amputations.

Leprosy affected persons also qualify, as differently abled persons, for the department's other benefits, including the Chief Minister's Comprehensive Health Insurance Scheme under which all differently abled persons and their family members are enrolled without any income ceiling, travel concessions in state transport corporation buses, and membership of the Tamil Nadu Welfare Board for Differently Abled Persons, open to differently abled persons above the age of 10 years through the District Differently Abled Welfare Office.

How to check your allowance status

1. Return to the e-Sevai centre where you applied and ask for the status against your application number.
2. Contact the District Differently Abled Welfare Officer at the district headquarters, who scrutinises and sanctions the application.
3. Call the toll-free helpline 1800-425-0111. Hearing impaired persons can use the WhatsApp video call number 9499933703.
4. Check the bank passbook or SMS alerts after the 5th of each month.

Why leprosy maintenance allowance payments stop

• Disability certificate expired. Temporary certificates need renewal at a medical board; a lapsed certificate is the commonest cause of suspension.
• Aadhaar not seeded with the bank account, so the DBT credit fails and returns.
• Bank account dormant or closed. Accounts opened only to receive the allowance and never operated go dormant, and the credit bounces.
• Name mismatch between Aadhaar, the bank record and the disability certificate.
• Beneficiary admitted to a rehabilitation home and the account left unoperated. Tell the District Differently Abled Welfare Officer if you move into a Government Rehabilitation Home so the record is updated rather than suspended.

Where to complain

• District level: the District Differently Abled Welfare Officer.
• State level: the Commissionerate for Welfare of the Differently Abled, No. 5, Kamarajar Salai, Chennai 600 005, telephone 044-28444940, office 044-28444948, email scd.tn@nic.in.
• Toll-free helpline: 1800-425-0111, and the WhatsApp video call number 9499933703 for hearing impaired persons.

No fee is charged at any stage, and no intermediary can secure a sanction. The allowance is sanctioned by the District Differently Abled Welfare Officer on the strength of the medical certificate.

Common reasons for rejection

The suspension reasons already covered elsewhere on this page (expired certificate, unseeded Aadhaar, dormant account) apply to allowances that are already sanctioned and later stop. A fresh application can also be turned down at the scrutiny stage itself, before any payment starts. These are the specific, recurring reasons the District Differently Abled Welfare Officer rejects a leprosy maintenance allowance application, and the fix for each.

• Disability certified below 40 per cent. The medical board's assessment, not the applicant's own sense of impairment, decides eligibility. If the certificate records the leprosy-related disability at, say, 25 or 30 per cent, the application is rejected outright, since the scheme's single threshold is 40 per cent and above. The fix is to request a fresh assessment at the medical board attached to a Government Medical College Hospital or District Headquarters Hospital, particularly if nerve damage or deformity has worsened since the last certificate was issued, and to reapply once a certificate crossing 40 per cent is in hand.

• Certificate issued by an authority the department does not recognise. Some applicants carry a certificate from a private hospital or a general practitioner rather than the certifying medical boards the department accepts. Such a certificate does not satisfy the scrutiny check and the file is returned. The fix is to get certified afresh at one of the recognised venues: a Government Medical College Hospital, a District Headquarters Hospital, a Taluk or non-Taluk hospital medical board, a special disability certification camp, or the State Resource cum Training Centres at Chennai or Tiruchirappalli.

• Mismatch between the applicant's name across documents. When the name on the disability certificate, the Aadhaar card and the bank passbook do not match exactly, for example a spelling difference or a maiden name still on one record, the e-Sevai centre or the scrutinising officer cannot verify that all three documents belong to the same person, and the application stalls or is rejected. The fix is to get the mismatched document corrected first (through the issuing authority or through Aadhaar's own correction process) rather than submitting the application and hoping the discrepancy is overlooked.

• Bank account not in the applicant's own name, or not linked to Aadhaar. Because the allowance is paid only by Direct Benefit Transfer, an account held jointly, held by a family member on the applicant's behalf, or not yet Aadhaar-seeded is a common ground for rejection or indefinite hold. The fix is to open or convert to a single-holder account in the applicant's own name at any bank and complete Aadhaar seeding before filing, not after.

• Incomplete document set at the e-Sevai centre. Filing without one of the required documents, most often the National Identity Card or UDID card, residence proof, or the photograph, means the application cannot be scrutinised and is sent back rather than sanctioned. The fix is to assemble the disability certificate, National Identity Card or UDID card, Aadhaar, bank passbook, residence proof and photograph together before visiting the centre, so nothing is missing at submission.

• Already drawing a maintenance allowance under another category. Since a beneficiary is entitled to one maintenance allowance and not one per eligible category, a second application under the leprosy category by someone already sanctioned under, say, the severely affected persons category is rejected as a duplicate claim. The fix, where the leprosy-related disability genuinely produces the higher assessment, is to apply for a category change through the District Differently Abled Welfare Officer rather than filing a fresh, parallel application.

• Applicant not resident in Tamil Nadu. The scheme is a Tamil Nadu state benefit, so an application from someone whose residence proof shows another state is rejected regardless of how the disability certificate reads. The fix, if the applicant has since relocated to Tamil Nadu, is to first establish residence proof for the district of current stay before filing.

In every one of these cases, the safest response is to correct the underlying document or account issue and refile through the same e-Sevai centre, rather than to escalate a rejected application without changing what caused the rejection.