Nearly two years into the government’s Dharti Aaba Janjatiya Gram Utkarsh Abhiyan (DAJGUA) programme for basic interventions in targeted tribal-dominated villages, progress has been slow, with the least progress seen so far in interventions that were supposed to be under the Union Ministry of Education, the Union Rural Development Ministry, and the Union Jal Shakti Ministry, among others, a review of the scheme by the Centre shows.

The DAJGUA scheme has been running since October 2024 and was intended to bring as many as 25 interventions to remote tribal villages and blocks under 17 Ministries.

Since the programme was launched, only four out of the 692 sanctioned hostels for Scheduled Tribes (ST) students across the country have been completed, with the Education Ministry having released about 27% of the funds sanctioned for this intervention. Foundation stones have been laid for about 300 hostels, government data shows.

Additionally, data presented in Parliament by the Union Ministry of Tribal Affairs shows that about 5% of the targeted ST beneficiaries have received LPG connections so far, and not a single road or bridge sanctioned to connect over 1,700 remote tribal villages has been completed.

Under the rural housing intervention, while the government had sanctioned over 17.2 lakh homes, around 7.8 lakh have been completed.

Under the intervention for on-grid electrification of households, about 34% of the sanctioned 2.86 lakh households have been electrified so far. Further, under the Jal Jeevan Mission, the government has saturated 47% of the over 63,000 tribal villages with supply of tap water.

The data was shared in the Rajya Sabha in response to a question on the progress of the DAJGUA programme.

In the reply, Union Minister of State for Tribal Affairs Durgadas Uikey said that the Ministry had identified “implementation bottlenecks” under rural housing, road connectivity, and other interventions. The Minister attributed these delays to “procedural issues, land-related constraints, statutory clearances, and coordination challenges among the implementing agencies”.

Published - July 22, 2026 07:44 pm IST