Ex-Gratia Grant for Clothes, Utensils, and Household Items to Disaster-Affected Families, Uttarakhand

What is the ex-gratia grant for clothes, utensils and household items?

Ex-Gratia Grant for Clothes, Utensils and Household Items is a gratuitous relief item paid from the State Disaster Response Fund (SDRF) by the Department of Disaster Management and Rehabilitation, Government of Uttarakhand, working through the Uttarakhand State Disaster Management Authority (USDMA) and the district administration. It gives a cash grant to a family whose house has been washed away or fully damaged in a notified natural disaster, so the household can replace the clothes and basic utensils lost along with the home.

Uttarakhand's terrain makes this a recurring need. Cloudbursts, flash floods, landslides and river-bank erosion regularly take away whole houses in the hill districts along with everything inside them. A family that survives such an event is often left with only the clothes they are wearing, and this relief head exists precisely for that gap between the immediate rescue phase and the longer housing reconstruction process.

The State Disaster Response Fund is constituted under the Disaster Management Act, 2005. It is the primary state-level fund for immediate relief, and the items payable from it are rule-based rather than discretionary. Clothing and utensils are two of the standing items on that list, which is why the amounts do not change from one disaster to the next unless the Government of India revises the norms.

How much money is paid under this scheme?

The SDRF norms that Uttarakhand follows set two separate amounts:

• Clothing: Rs 2,500 per affected family.
• Utensils and household goods: Rs 2,500 per affected family.

Together this comes to a maximum of Rs 5,000 per family. The two heads are assessed separately, so it is possible for a family to be sanctioned one and not the other if the damage survey supports only one of them, for example where household goods were destroyed but clothing was salvaged.

These are per-family amounts, not per-person amounts. A household of two and a household of eight receive the same figure, because the norm is written against the affected family unit as recorded in the damage survey.

Who is eligible for this relief?

You can claim if:

• Your house was washed away or fully damaged in a notified natural disaster in Uttarakhand; flood, cloudburst, landslide, avalanche, earthquake, hailstorm, cyclone, fire, frost or cold wave.
• The loss is certified by the damage-assessment survey carried out by revenue and disaster management staff of the district.
• You were residing in the affected house at the time of the disaster.
• The family has not already been paid the same relief head for the same event.

You are not eligible and cannot claim if:

• The damage was not caused by a notified disaster. Ordinary wear, poor maintenance, a domestic accident or a dispute outside a declared calamity does not qualify.
• Your house was only partly damaged and the survey does not record that the household's clothing and goods were lost. This head is tied to houses washed away or fully damaged.
• There is no damage-assessment survey on record, so the loss cannot be established.
• The same relief head has already been paid to your family for the same disaster event. Duplicate claims within one family are disallowed.

The guiding principle is one grant per affected family per event. Because the relief is triggered by an official survey rather than by a self-declared claim, being physically present or represented when the survey team visits your village matters more than the paperwork you file afterwards.

What documents are required?

How to apply for the ex-gratia grant

1. Report the loss immediately at your Tehsil office or to the District Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) in your district. Reporting early is the single most important step, because the relief flows from the official damage record rather than from a written application alone.
2. Be present for the damage-assessment survey. Revenue and disaster management staff visit the affected houses and record whether each house was washed away, fully damaged or partly damaged, and whether household goods and clothing were lost.
3. Submit your claim papers: proof of residence, Aadhaar and bank passbook; to the Tehsil office along with a simple written application referring to the disaster event and the survey.
4. Collect the acknowledgement and note the date and the name of the official who received it.
5. Wait for sanction and credit. Once the district administration approves the assessment, the sanctioned amount is released from the State Disaster Response Fund and credited to your bank account.

There is no online form and no fee. If a village has been cut off, the district administration may run camps or send teams to the relief site, and claims can be filed there.

How to check the status of your claim

The claim is processed entirely at district level, so follow-up is local rather than through a portal. Keep the acknowledgement you were given and check with the Tehsil office where the claim was filed. If the survey itself is still pending, the right first contact is the patwari or revenue official for your area, who conducts the field inspection. Once the survey is complete, the sanction and payment stage is handled by the District Disaster Management Authority under the District Magistrate.

Because payment is made by direct bank transfer, an incorrect account number or a dormant account is a common cause of delay after sanction. Confirming your bank details at the time of filing avoids a failed transfer that then has to be re-issued.

Why claims get delayed or rejected

• No damage-assessment survey on record. Without the survey the loss cannot be quantified, and no relief head can be sanctioned.
• Damage not linked to a notified disaster. The event must fall within the calamities covered by the State Disaster Response Fund.
• House recorded as only partly damaged, where the survey does not support loss of clothing and household goods.
• Bank or Aadhaar details incomplete or mismatched, causing the transfer to fail after sanction.
• Duplicate claim by another member of the same family for the same event.

The usual fix for the first two is to ask the Tehsildar for a re-survey or a review of the survey record. For the payment failures, correcting the bank details at the Tehsil office is enough to have the transfer re-issued.

What other relief may go with this grant

The clothing and utensils grant is only one line in the State Disaster Response Fund's standing list, and an affected family usually qualifies for more than this amount alone. Under the same SDRF norms, an affected household in Uttarakhand may also receive:

• Housing assistance for a destroyed house — Rs 1,30,000 per fully destroyed house in hilly areas and Rs 1,20,000 in the plains, with smaller amounts for partly damaged pucca and kutcha houses.
• Gratuitous relief for families whose livelihood is seriously affected and who are not housed in relief camps, paid for the days notified for the calamity at a daily rate linked to the MGNREGA wage.
• Ex-gratia for death in a notified disaster: Rs 4,00,000 to the next of kin, subject to certification of the cause of death by the competent authority.
• Ex-gratia for injury: Rs 16,000 where hospitalisation exceeds a week and Rs 5,400 where it is less than a week, and Rs 74,000 to Rs 2,50,000 for loss of a limb or eyes depending on the certified extent of disability.
• Assistance for loss of milch and draught animals at the per-animal rates in the SDRF list, subject to the ceiling on the number of animals.

Ask the district administration for the full package that applies to your case rather than treating this Rs 5,000 as the whole entitlement. After major disasters the state government sometimes announces additional discretionary assistance over and above the SDRF norms.

Help and where to raise a problem

• Uttarakhand State Disaster Management Authority (USDMA); usdma.uk.gov.in
• District Disaster Management Authority / District Magistrate office. The authority that runs the damage survey and sanctions the relief
• Tehsil / revenue office, the first point to report the loss and file the claim

If relief is wrongly refused, the first escalation is the District Magistrate, who chairs the District Disaster Management Authority, and then the state relief machinery under the Department of Disaster Management and Rehabilitation and USDMA.

Key facts to remember

• Clothing: Rs 2,500 and utensils / household goods: Rs 2,500, a maximum of Rs 5,000 per affected family.
• The amounts are per family, not per person.
• The house must have been washed away or fully damaged in a notified natural disaster.
• The claim runs offline through the Tehsil office and District Disaster Management Authority, and is paid by direct bank transfer from the State Disaster Response Fund.
• This grant is in addition to the SDRF housing assistance and other relief heads.

Note: the Rs 2,500 and Rs 2,500 figures are the standing SDRF norm amounts that Uttarakhand follows. For a specific disaster the district administration issues operative orders, so confirm the current process and any event-specific enhancement with your DDMA.