House panel pulls up line ministries for ‘slow, tardy’ progress in execution of flagship schemes for tribal villages

The Departmental Standing Committee (DRSC), examining the Request for Grants to the Ministry of Tribal Affairs, on Wednesday, March 11, 2026, appealed to the government on the “slow and delayed” progress of line ministries in managing flagship multi-ministry programs for Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups and Scheduled Tribe communities across the country.

The programs include feeding campaigns for PM-JANMAN and ‘Dharti Aaba Janjatiya Gram Utkarsh Abhiyan’ (DAJGUA) schemes.

The parliamentary panel said this “points directly to profound mismanagement in the implementation of the plan”.

DRSC on Social Justice and Empowerment, chaired by BJP MP PC Mohan, submitted its report on the Tribal Affairs ministry on Wednesday, March 11, 2026. In this report, the Committee noted a trend towards reducing allocations in the revised forecast phase for both program saturation programmes.

Commenting on the progress of the PM-JANMAN scheme, the Committee said: “There is slow and delayed progress in execution of works by various Ministries as the work done by Ministries such as M/o Rural Development, M/o Education and M/o Jal Shakti is far behind the target.”

PM-JANMAN aims to target Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups within the Scheduled Tribes and is spread across nine line ministries with 11 interventions in the areas of health, education, nutrition, roads and connectivity, construction of Multi-Purpose Centers and Anganwadis, installation of solar panels, electrification and sanitation.

Comparison of the targets set and the progress achieved showed that the Ministry of Rural Development has completed construction of 2.6 lakh of the approved 4.7 lakh pucca houses and constructed 1,883 km of link roads out of the approved 7,317 km. Data presented to the panel also showed that the Ministry of Education had completed only 10 of the 500 sanctioned hostels, while 296 had started functioning. Moreover, the Ministry of Jal Sahkti has managed to connect 8,391 Villages to piped water supply despite sanctions being imposed on more than 18,000 villages.

Ministry of Tribal Affairs approves faster sanctioning of houses under PM-JANMAN package for vulnerable tribes

Moreover, the Jal Shakti Ministry has managed to connect 8,391 Villages to piped water supply despite sanctions being imposed on more than 18,000 villages.

Similar observations were made by the Parliamentary panel for the DAJGUA plan, which was modeled after PM-JANMAN. He said that the Ministries of Rural Development, Jal Shakti and the Ministries of New and Renewable Energy “have not yet started functioning” and “several Ministries are yet to complete the tasks assigned to be completed by March this year”.

“This directly points to deep mismanagement in the implementation of the plan; the Committee is therefore of the view that the Ministry should take capacity-building measures and provide technical support to implementing agencies, including local institutions and field-level authorities, to build momentum,” the panel said.