Mission Saksham Anganwadi & Poshan 2.0, DNH & DD(SS-DADRA AND NAGAR HAVELI AND DAMAN & DIU)

Overview

About SS-DADRA AND NAGAR HAVELI AND DAMAN & DIU

Mission Saksham Anganwadi and Poshan 2.0 enrols no student, pays no fees and credits no account. It is the anganwadi programme, and the people it serves in Dadra & Nagar Haveli and Daman & Diu are children below six, pregnant women and lactating mothers. A school or college student will find nothing here. A mother with a two-year-old, or a woman four months pregnant, is the person the mission was designed around, and what she is entitled to is food, weighing, immunisation support and pre-school teaching at a centre near her house.

Poshan 2.0 delivers a package of six services through anganwadi centres: supplementary nutrition, pre-school non-formal education, nutrition and health education, immunisation, health check-up and referral services. Three of those six, immunisation, health check-up and referral, come through the National Health Mission and public health staff rather than the anganwadi worker herself, as the Ministry of Women and Child Development set out in a Lok Sabha reply on 31 July 2026.

How big is the network in this union territory, and how old is the count? The Ministry's state-wise statement, placed in Rajya Sabha on 1 December 2021, records 409 anganwadi centres sanctioned for Dadra & Nagar Haveli and Daman & Diu and 405 of them operational as on 30 June 2021, against 30,507 registered children aged 6 months to 6 years and 7,328 pregnant and lactating mothers, 37,835 beneficiaries in all. Read those as a 2021 photograph. Asked in July 2026 for district-wise beneficiary numbers, the Ministry answered with a link rather than a table, pointing the House at the Poshan Tracker public dashboard. A current count sits there and nowhere in the parliamentary record.

The listing further down the page counts them another way, district by district across Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Daman and Diu, and its three figures add to a smaller total and carry no date at all. The Ministry's count is the one used here because it says when it was taken. Both descriptions agree on the geography: the centres are spread over the union territory's three districts, so which one a family walks into depends on where it lives.

The need is measurable. Answering a Rajya Sabha question on 22 March 2023, the Ministry tabled National Family Health Survey 5 figures showing 39.4 per cent of children under five in this union territory stunted, 21.6 per cent wasted and 38.7 per cent underweight.

Who pays is worth knowing, because it is not the usual arrangement. The guidelines fix the general Centre to state cost share for Poshan 2.0 at 60:40 where the state or union territory has a legislature and at 100:0 where it does not, and Dadra & Nagar Haveli and Daman & Diu has no legislature, so the mission is carried entirely on central funds here.

The sums are small, and reading the three years the Ministry published side by side, the releases have come down. Answering an unstarred question on the ICDS scheme in Lok Sabha, the Ministry tabled this union territory's figures: Rs 11.97 crore released in 2023-24 against Rs 11.57 crore utilised, Rs 9.13 crore released in 2024-25 against Rs 9.07 crore utilised, and Rs 5.92 crore released in 2025-26. The annexure carries no utilisation column against that last year, so what was actually spent of it is not on the record yet.

Who runs it

Provider

At a glance

Key details

Calendar

Important dates

The programme runs on a monthly rhythm rather than an annual one, so there is no window to watch for and no last date to meet. Take Home Ration is distributed twice a month, preferably on the 1st and the 15th, and where either falls on a holiday it moves to the next working day. Registration is accepted whenever a family presents itself.

The listing further down the page describes the ration as a monthly handout of ready-to-eat ladoos instead, so the two do not quite line up and the working question is which rhythm your own centre keeps. Ask the worker for her distribution days and write them down; that is the only calendar a household under this mission has to hold.

An older date also sits on that listing and answers to nothing. Anganwadi Services was launched in 1975 and was re-aligned under this mission decades later, so the opening date shown against the scheme reaches back to that earlier programme. Nothing about it is a deadline.

One date does bound the scheme as a whole. Poshan 2.0 was approved for implementation during the 15th Finance Commission period, 2021-22 to 2025-26, which the Ministry stated when it issued the guidelines in August 2022. Families should not read that as an expiry on their entitlement to supplementary nutrition, which the National Food Security Act, 2013 creates independently, but the scheme's own funding cycle has reached its stated end and the terms that follow it are for the Ministry to notify.

Who can apply

Eligibility criteria

Registration, not income, is what decides eligibility. The scheme guidelines describe Poshan 2.0 as open to all eligible beneficiaries on demand, irrespective of caste, religion and income criteria, with one precondition: the beneficiary is registered at the nearest anganwadi centre with Aadhaar identification. A child's own Aadhaar is expressly not mandatory, and the mother's Aadhaar can be used instead.

That matters in an industrial union territory where families arrive for work. The guidelines say pregnant women, lactating mothers and children up to six residing even temporarily in a centre's coverage area shall be registered and served, so a family that has just moved to Silvassa or Daman does not have to wait out a domicile period.

The adolescent girl component is the one place where the national rule and the union territory's own listing sit awkwardly together. Nationally the scheme reaches girls aged 14 to 18 only in Aspirational Districts and in the North Eastern Region, and NITI Aayog's published list of 112 Aspirational Districts names no district of Dadra & Nagar Haveli and Daman & Diu. The union territory's own scheme record still lists adolescent girls of 14 to 18 among its beneficiaries. Anyone in that age group should ask the local Child Development Project Officer whether the component is actually running before counting on it.

Who cannot apply

Exclusions

A universal, self-selecting service does not need a bar list, which is why the union territory's record leaves this heading blank. What keeps a person out in practice is arithmetic rather than screening. A child turns six and stops being a beneficiary. A woman's lactating-mother entitlement runs out. Someone who never walked into the centre and got their name into the register is outside the scheme, however eligible they are on paper.

Continuation

Renewal conditions

Entitlement here is a status the anganwadi register holds, not an award with a term attached, so a family never files anything a second time. A child registered at six months stays on the rolls until the sixth birthday, moving between categories as the entitlement changes with age. The one action a family does need to take is when it moves: the guidelines provide a migration facility in the Poshan Tracker so a beneficiary registered at one centre is transferred to the new one for the period of stay, instead of being registered afresh.

What you get

Award & benefits

Everything is delivered in kind. Children aged 3 to 6 eat at the centre, taking a morning snack and a hot cooked meal; pregnant women, lactating mothers, children between 6 months and 3 years and severely malnourished children receive Take Home Ration, which the guidelines require to be a prepared food rather than raw wheat, rice or dal. Supplementary nutrition is to be served for a minimum of 300 days in a calendar year, an average of 25 days a month.

The quantities are set nationally, per beneficiary per day:

Read that table with its own footnote in mind. The guidelines print a note under it saying the nutritional norms are under revision and will be notified shortly, and the guidelines themselves were issued on 2 August 2022, so the figures are the 2022 position and a revised set may already be with the union territory.

Alongside the food, the centre is the platform for health inputs the National Health Mission supplies: iron syrup twice a week for a child from 6 months to five years, a deworming tablet every six months from 12 months, Vitamin A twice a year from nine months, and for a pregnant woman two tetanus toxoid shots, iron and folic acid tablets and one deworming tablet in the second trimester. Height and weight are to be taken every month for every registered child.

One field on the listing further down the page looks like money and is not. The benefit type given there is In Kind, and the direct benefit transfer marker sitting next to it is not a promise of a credit: neither the guidelines nor the Ministry's replies to Parliament provide for any payment to a beneficiary under this mission. What the Aadhaar seeding buys is proof of delivery rather than a transfer, and the Ministry has been tightening that end of it, adding face recognition to the Poshan Tracker across the country in December 2024 with an option to hand over Take Home Ration without it, and a nominee module so a woman who cannot reach the centre herself can name someone to collect her ration.

• Under the scheme, Pregnant women, lactating mothers, and children in the age group of 0 to 3 years receive Take Home Ration (THR) in the form of ready-to-eat nutritious ladoos on a monthly basis. Additionally, children aged 3 to 6 years are provided with hot cooked meals at the Anganwadi Centres.

What to prepare

Documents required

Two documents do the work. Aadhaar identifies the beneficiary, and the mother's card is accepted where the child has none. The Mother and Child Protection card carries the pregnancy and immunisation record that the worker updates and the health staff read.

If the family has no Aadhaar at all, the guidelines place funds for Aadhaar enrolment kits with the states and union territories and ask that beneficiaries be enrolled at the anganwadi centre itself, and they put the duty of helping a beneficiary obtain a card on the anganwadi worker, the supervisor, the Child Development Project Officer and the District Programme Officer. On the face of the guidelines, not having a card slows a family down; it does not shut the family out.

Step by step

How to apply

Walk into the anganwadi centre that covers your address, during its working hours, and ask the anganwadi worker to register the child or the pregnancy. She enters the beneficiary in the Poshan Tracker, the application the Ministry rolled out on 1 March 2021 and now uses for attendance, growth measurement and ration records. Take the Aadhaar card and the Mother and Child Protection card. At registration the worker is required to tell you what you are entitled to, when Take Home Ration will be distributed and when the hot cooked meal is served.

Afterwards there is no status page to refresh. The Poshan Tracker belongs to the worker, not to the parent: it is what she opens to mark that the centre is open, log attendance, enter a month's height and weight and record a ration issue, and the dashboard the Ministry sends citizens to reports district totals rather than a named child. Verification here is a paper exercise done standing at the centre. Ask the worker for the entry against your child's name in the register, the growth chart she fills in after each monthly weighing, and the immunisation page of the Mother and Child Protection card.

How winners are picked

Selection process

No one is ranked and no one is shortlisted. Every registered beneficiary in an eligible category is served, and the assessment that follows registration is clinical rather than competitive. The monthly height and weight measurement places each child as normal, underweight, stunted, severely acutely malnourished or moderately acutely malnourished, and a severely malnourished child is referred to a hospital or a Nutrition Rehabilitation Centre and given additional nutrition as Take Home Ration on top of what the centre already provides.

Fine print

Terms & conditions

Several conditions bind the administration rather than the family, and they are the ones worth knowing when something is wrong with the food. Take Home Ration must not be issued as raw ration. Millets are to be supplied at least once a week. Jaggery is to be used for sweetening and white sugar is not. Everything served must meet the standards under the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006, samples are drawn by the Child Development Project Officer or the supervisor and tested in laboratories owned, registered or accredited through the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, and the District Nutrition Committee under the District Magistrate is responsible for periodic testing of ration at randomly selected centres.

Oversight is monthly and local. The guidelines put receipt and distribution of supplementary nutrition under the eye of the Village Health Sanitation and Nutrition Committee, the lady supervisor and the Child Development Project Officer, with social audit by Poshan Panchayats and mothers' groups.

Get help

Contact

The department that runs the scheme in this union territory is the Department of Social Welfare and Women and Child Development, Dadra & Nagar Haveli and Daman & Diu, which gives its address as District Court Premises, Fort Area, Moti Daman 396220 on its own notices. Those notices go out over the signature of the Director cum Deputy Secretary and print socialwelfaredaman[at]gmail[dot]com as the department's email. That is the desk above every anganwadi in all three districts.

Below it the guidelines name the chain to climb. The anganwadi worker comes first, then the lady supervisor, whose salary the mission funds at one for every 25 main centres, then the Child Development Project Officer for the project, then the District Programme Officer. A shut centre, ration that is short or late, or food that looks unfit belongs to the supervisor or the Child Development Project Officer, and those are the same officers who draw samples and send them to an FSSAI laboratory, so a complaint about food and a test of that food travel to one desk.

A shut centre also leaves a trace without anyone complaining. Opening of the centre, daily attendance, growth measurement and the provision of hot cooked meals and Take Home Ration are all entered in the Poshan Tracker as near real-time data, so a run of closed days is visible above the worker's head. Say the dates when you complain; they can be checked.

Source

Official links

Frequently asked questions

From the official scheme FAQ (myScheme)

Read this

Disclaimer

Disclaimer

Scheme details are compiled from myScheme, the Government of India’s official scheme-discovery platform, and are reproduced without alteration. Amounts, deadlines and eligibility change between cycles, so always confirm on the official links above before applying. Expertie does not process applications or charge fees.

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