Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Grah Aawas (Home-Stay) Vikas Yojana

What is the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Grah Aawas (Home-Stay) Vikas Yojana?

Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Grah Aawas (Home-Stay) Vikas Yojana is Uttarakhand's flagship homestay scheme, run by the Tourism Department through the Uttarakhand Tourism Development Board and delivered on the ground by the District Tourism Development Officer in each district. Local readers usually search for it as the "Deendayal Upadhyay Grah Awas Yojana" or simply the Uttarakhand homestay scheme.

The scheme has a simple idea behind it. Uttarakhand receives far more visitors than its hotels can absorb, and most of those hotels sit in a handful of towns. Villages a few kilometres off the main route see the traffic pass by but earn nothing from it. The scheme therefore pays a house owner to upgrade spare rooms in their own home to a standard tourists will accept, register the house as a homestay, and earn from it, without building a hotel and without converting the land to commercial use.

According to the Tourism Department's scheme documents, the stated objectives are to spread tourists beyond the popular circuits to remote destinations, to add accommodation capacity where hotels are not viable, to create local employment, and to give house owners an additional source of income while offering visitors clean and affordable accommodation.

Main features

• Capital subsidy on the cost of building or renovating guest rooms.
• Interest subsidy on the bank loan for the first 5 years.
• Reimbursement of State GST on homestay income for the first 3 years.
• No conversion of residential land use required.
• Hospitality and safety training, plus listing on the state's homestay portal.

Who is eligible for the Uttarakhand home-stay scheme?

You can apply if:

• You are a permanent resident of Uttarakhand and can produce a domicile certificate.
• You own the house proposed as the homestay, or hold it on a valid long-term registered lease.
• You and your family live in that house, the scheme is for owner-occupied homes, not empty buildings.
• The house is in a rural area or within a Nagar Panchayat limit for a homestay. Bed-and-breakfast units under the same rules may be registered in urban areas as well.
• The unit will have not more than 8 guest rooms and 24 beds under the revised 2026 rules. The earlier ceiling was 6 rooms and 12 beds.
• You are not a defaulter to any bank or financial institution.

Applicants from reserved categories, Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe, Other Backward Class, ex-servicemen and persons with disabilities; are given preference by the District Level Selection Committee where applications exceed the target.

You cannot apply if:

• You are not a permanent resident of Uttarakhand.
• The property is a hotel, lodge, guest house or purely commercial building rather than a residence you live in.
• The house is let out entirely with no family living on the premises.
• You are a loan defaulter, or the bank refuses to sanction the term loan.
• The proposed unit exceeds the room and bed ceiling, in which case it is treated as a hotel and falls under a different licensing regime.

How much money does the homestay scheme give?

The capital subsidy is not paid in cash to the applicant. It is released to the financing bank and credited against the term loan after the District Tourism Development Officer certifies that the rooms have actually been built or renovated as per the approved project report. The interest subsidy is likewise routed through the bank each year against the interest actually charged.

Because the subsidy is a percentage of the sanctioned project cost, the estimate you submit matters. A padded estimate is cut down at the inspection stage; an under-stated one permanently caps what you can claim.

How to apply for the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Home-Stay Vikas Yojana

1. Open the Mukhyamantri Swarojgar Yojana portal at msy.uk.gov.in, which is the common application window used for this scheme.
2. Register with your mobile number and verify it using the OTP sent to you.
3. Select the home-stay scheme from the list and fill in the application form with your personal details, the address of the house, the number of rooms proposed and the project cost.
4. Upload the scanned documents — domicile certificate, ownership papers, building map, project report, bank consent letter, Aadhaar and photograph.
5. Submit the form and save the acknowledgement number shown on screen. This is the number you quote for every follow-up.
6. Attend document verification and site inspection by the District Tourism Development Office. An officer visits the house to confirm the rooms exist and the family lives there.
7. Wait for the District Level Selection Committee to consider the case and forward it to the bank.
8. Complete the bank formalities once the loan is sanctioned, and start construction or renovation.
9. Apply for registration of the homestay on homestay.uttarakhandtourism.gov.in once the rooms are ready. Registration is valid for 5 years and is renewable online.

How to apply offline

1. Visit the District Tourism Development Office (DTDO) in your district headquarters and collect the scheme application form. Several districts, including Rudraprayag, publish the same form as a downloadable PDF on their district website.
2. Fill it in and attach self-attested copies of the domicile certificate, ownership record, building map, project estimate and bank consent letter.
3. Submit the file to the DTDO and obtain a dated receipt.
4. Follow up with the DTDO for the inspection date and the selection committee's decision.

Offline submission is a fallback. The 2026 revision of the rules makes online registration, verification and renewal of the homestay itself mandatory, so even an offline subsidy applicant ends up on the portal at the registration stage.

How do I check the status of my homestay application?

Log in to msy.uk.gov.in with the mobile number you registered with and open your application using the acknowledgement number. The portal shows which stage the file is at: document verification, inspection, selection committee, bank sanction, or subsidy released. For the registration certificate itself, log in at homestay.uttarakhandtourism.gov.in. If the online status has not moved for several weeks, the District Tourism Development Office is the right place to ask, because almost every hold-up at that stage is a physical file waiting for an inspection report.

Why homestay applications get rejected

• No domicile certificate, or a certificate in a family member's name rather than the applicant's.
• Ownership not established. The khatauni shows joint ownership and the co-owners have not consented.
• Building map not approved, or the constructed rooms differ from the map.
• Applicant does not live in the house, which takes the unit out of the homestay definition altogether.
• Bank refuses the loan, usually because of an existing default or a weak repayment case. The capital subsidy cannot be released without a loan.
• Room count above the ceiling of 8 rooms and 24 beds.
• Estimate not supported by bills at the inspection stage, so the subsidy is recalculated on the lower verified cost.

Most of these are fixable. A joint-ownership objection is cured by a no-objection letter from the co-owners; a map objection is cured by getting the revised layout approved before the inspection rather than after it.

Key dates and recent changes

The scheme has run since 2015 and, according to the Tourism Department's own figures reported in 2026, roughly 1,500 people have received subsidy under it. The state government announced an expansion of the scheme on World Tourism Day, 27 September 2024. In 2026 the cabinet approved a consolidated set of rules merging the 2014 travel regulations with the 2015 homestay rules. That revision raised the ceiling from 6 rooms and 12 beds to 8 rooms and 24 beds, made registration compulsory with a 5-year validity, moved registration and renewal fully online, and created the Community-Based Tourism Unit category for clusters of 8 to 10 homestays or 3 to 6 villages.

Help and grievance redressal

• Uttarakhand Tourism helpline: 1364 (from within the state); 0135-2559898.
• District Tourism Development Officer in your district, the first point of contact for subsidy files, inspections and delays.
• Homestay portal: homestay.uttarakhandtourism.gov.in for registration, renewal and the list of registered units.

No agent is needed to apply. Registration on the government portal is done by the applicant, and no official will ask for your OTP or portal password.