Scheme For Grant Of Rewards To The Children Of Salt Labourers(SGRCSL)

Overview

About SGRCSL

A salt worker's child in Class 6 to Class 12 can be paid Rs 1,000 to Rs 2,000 once in an academic year, and the claim travels through the salt works that employs the parent rather than through any portal, under scheme guidelines the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade publishes for a scheme dating from 1985. DPIIT has put out the same three figures since 2011-12.

The department's own scheme record counts 1,884 rewards paid in 2017-18 and leaves the years after it blank, on a page last updated on 27 January 2025. A family should read that before spending a week collecting certificates.

The reward is labour welfare money, not a scholarship in the usual sense. It came out of the Code of Principles that governed how salt cess proceeds were spent on salt workers, and education for workers' children was one of the listed heads. The Salt Commissioner's Organisation (SCO), an attached office of DPIIT with its head office in Jaipur and regional offices at Chennai, Mumbai and Ahmedabad, runs it, as the department's Annual Report 2024-25 sets out.

It started small. The scheme was launched in 1985 granting 20 rewards; the count was raised to 3,500 a year from 2011-12, with a stated financial implication of Rs 45.00 lakh, per DPIIT's scheme record.

Nothing about it is confined to Tamil Nadu, whatever a state field on an aggregator may suggest. The guidelines split the 3,500 rewards across five salt producing regions: Gujarat 1,580, Chennai 1,120, Mumbai 80, Kolkata 120 and Rajasthan 600, and allow the regional numbers to move as long as the total holds. Tamil Nadu sits inside the Chennai region, which is also the largest single block after Gujarat.

That five region map is itself dated. SCO has since closed and merged offices, and its office list keeps the head office at Jaipur with regional offices at Chennai, Ahmedabad and Mumbai only, the Kolkata region gone and Contai in West Bengal now sitting under the Chennai region's Humma circle.

Who runs it

Provider

At a glance

Key details

Calendar

Important dates

Two dates run the year, and neither is announced by a notification a family can watch for. Applications are due with the employer for onward transmission by 31 July, and the Regional Officer's consolidated submission is due by 20 August. No annual advertisement, portal opening or press release marks the window, unlike the Labour Ministry's scholarship rounds.

Whether a round is running at all is the harder question, and the honest answer is that no public record shows one. DPIIT's physical progress table for the scheme reads as follows.

The achievement column is left as a dash for 2016-17, which records nothing rather than declaring a zero. The same table sets a target for 2018-19 and leaves the achievement column against it empty too, and higher up the page sits a line saying the scheme was proposed to be transferred to the Ministry of Labour and Employment after 31 March 2017, both on DPIIT's older scheme page.

There is a plausible reason the numbers fall away when they do. The reward was paid out of salt cess proceeds under the Code of Principles, and the Salt Cess Act, 1953 was repealed in the Finance Bill 2015-16. DPIIT's Annual Report 2024-25 describes undertaking welfare activities for salt workers among the things SCO was responsible for earlier, and lists its present key functions as safeguarding and managing salt pan land, in the chapter on the Office of the Salt Commissioner.

SCO's own annual report still keeps a Children Reward Scheme heading, and records under it that no rewards were sanctioned and distributed during 2020-21 because of Covid-19, in the report for that year.

The budget is less conclusive than it first looks. In the Demands for Grants for 2025-26 no separate line carries this scheme; the only salt entry is Rs 37.52 crore against the Salt Commissioner under establishment expenditure. The note printed beside that entry, though, says the budget provides for establishment charges of the organisation, for development and welfare schemes of salt workers, and for the cost of managing SCO land, in the department's own budget statement. A missing scheme line is therefore not proof that the money has stopped, only that it is no longer shown separately.

A word on where these facts come from, because it bears on how much weight they carry. DPIIT still serves the guidelines PDF, and it still publishes a short scheme description under its offerings section. The longer write-up, the physical progress table and the transfer line quoted above lived on an older dpiit.gov.in address that no longer serves the page, so they are cited here from an Internet Archive capture of it. The Salt Commissioner's Organisation documents are cited the same way: saltcomindia.gov.in resolves but would not serve a connection during this check.

None of that is a formal closure notice, and the myScheme record still lists the scheme as open with no closing date. It does mean a family should confirm with the regional salt office that a round exists before treating the July date as live.

Who can apply

Eligibility criteria

The parent's job is the gate. A "salt worker" is defined in the guidelines simply as a person working in the salt industry, and eligibility rests on that worker having put in a minimum of one year of continuous service in any of the salt works. There is no welfare board to register with and no worker identity card in the scheme text.

The child has to be studying in classes VI to XII, has to be passing from a recognised government school, and has to have passed the examination in the first attempt. All three conditions come from the scheme guidelines.

How long the parent must have worked is the one condition an applicant cannot settle from the published text, and the disagreement is not between two websites. It is inside the guidelines PDF itself. Clause 4(i) sets the bar at a minimum of one year of continuous service. The employer's certificate printed at the foot of the same document asks the salt works to certify continuous service of not less than three years, while the Hindi text of that identical paragraph asks it to certify more than one year. All three readings sit in the file DPIIT serves as the scheme guidelines.

DPIIT's detailed write-up of the scheme lands on the longer reading and adds a limit the guidelines never mention: it describes coverage as children of salt workers engaged in any of the salt works in India since the last three consecutive years, and says only one child of the salt worker, who has passed in the first attempt and continues further studies, is eligible. That write-up is on the department's older scheme page. A household with two school-age children, or a parent two years into a job, should ask the regional office which version it works to before paying for certificates.

There is no published marks bar. Selection runs on ranking rather than a threshold, and the guidelines direct the scrutinising officer to be guided strictly by merit as indicated by the percentage of marks obtained in that year's examination. Where candidates are otherwise equal, preference goes to SC, ST, BC and backward area applicants.

Who cannot apply

Exclusions

The guidelines print no disqualification clause at all, so the bars have to be read out of the eligibility wording rather than off a list. A child in a private school does not qualify, because the school has to be a recognised government one. A child who cleared the year on a second attempt does not qualify. A parent short of the service qualification does not qualify, and the certificate that proves the service is written by the employer, not the family.

Beyond those, the binding constraint is arithmetic. SCO's annual report estimates that on average over 91,150 labourers work in the industry, with roughly another lakh engaged in iodisation, refining and handling, in its report for 2020-21. Against that workforce, the guidelines sanction 3,500 rewards in a full year, so a qualifying application still has to out-rank other qualifying applications.

Continuation

Renewal conditions

A reward here attaches to a single examination result rather than to a student's file, so there is nothing on record for an office to extend. The reward is granted once in each academic year to a child who has just passed an examination, and the application form asks for the session in which that examination was passed, so a student who qualifies again in a later class files a fresh form for that year. DPIIT's write-up adds the expectation that the child continues further studies, which is the only continuity condition stated anywhere.

What you get

Award & benefits

The money is a single cash payment, meant for books and stationery at the start of the academic year rather than for fees, and it is paid in one lump sum at the commencement of the year. The rates run by class band.

Say the vintage of those slabs out loud, because it matters more here than the amount itself. The guidelines carry one footnote against the number of rewards, recording that the count was raised to 3,500 during 2011-12 by the Ministry's letter No. 44011/13/2002-Salt of 16 January 2012; the three amounts sit in the body of the same scheme text and carry no later revision note of their own. DPIIT's write-up dates the whole package, count and amounts together, to 2011-12.

The department's older scheme page records the guidelines as amended up to 31 October 2018 and still prints the same three amounts, so nothing has been revised in well over a decade.

Girls have a floor rather than a separate rate. A minimum of 50% of the allocation per state is reserved for girl children, and where a particular salt factory or state has no eligible female applicants the reward may go to eligible male students in that category elsewhere, as DPIIT states.

• The rewards shall be granted once in each academic year to the meritorious children of salt workers to enable the students to meet the initial expenses either partly or wholly for the purchase of books, stationery, etc. on admission to a recognized Institute, recognized by the State/Central Government.
• The rewards shall be granted to the students of the salt workers in cash, to be paid in one lump sum at the commencement of the academic year at the rates given below:
• Student/ClassesRewards in an academic yearStudents of classes VI to VIII₹1000/-Students of classes IX to X₹1500/-Students of classes XI to XII ₹2000/-

What to prepare

Documents required

Three different desks sign this file. The salt works certifies the parent, the school certifies the child, and the family fills in everything else.

The employer's certificate carries the case: it has to specify the date from which the salt worker has been in continuous service in the salt work. The proforma also takes the signature of the proprietor or lessee of the salt works, the name and mobile number of the works, and the countersignature of the Factory Officer.

The school's part is proof of merit: a certificate that the child passed the primary, middle, secondary or higher secondary examination in the first attempt, a certified copy of the marksheet issued by the concerned Board, and the headmaster's signature and seal on the form itself.

What is left to the household is identity and payment: date of birth, gender, the caste certificate where SC, ST or OBC preference is being claimed, the Aadhaar number, and the bank account number, bank name, branch and IFSC or RTGS code. Every one of those fields is printed in the application proforma inside the scheme guidelines. The form also asks whether a brother or sister of the candidate has applied under the same scheme.

Step by step

How to apply

Nothing about this claim happens online, and the parent's employer is the first desk it crosses. A child who wants the reward applies in the prescribed form to the Salt Commissioner, Jaipur, through his or her employer, no later than the 31st day of July of the academic year in which the examination was passed. The form does not go to Jaipur directly: it is forwarded through the Regional Officer of the region in which the salt works falls, and that officer has to submit the processed applications to the Salt Commissioner with recommendations by 20 August. Both deadlines are set in the guidelines.

Which office that is depends on where the salt pans are. SCO's office list puts the Chennai regional office over circle offices at Kakinada, Chennai, Tuticorin and Humma, with factory offices grouped under Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu North, Tamil Nadu South and Humma, the last of which takes in Ganjam, Bolong and Contai; the Ahmedabad regional office over Jamnagar, Gandhidham and Dhrangadhra; and the Mumbai regional office over Bhayandar and Bhandup, with factory offices down the Konkan and Karnataka coast, in its list of offices after closure and merger.

Payment lands in the student's own account. The form collects the applicant's bank account, branch and IFSC or RTGS code along with the Aadhaar number, so the reward is a credit rather than a cheque handed over at the works. The scheme has no National Scholarship Portal listing and the myScheme entry leaves its DBT field empty, so no portal-side transfer trail exists for a family to open.

Tracking is where an applicant is left with nothing in hand. The scheme creates no acknowledgement for the student, no reference number and no status page, and the only people who can say where a file has reached are the ones who moved it. In practice that means asking the salt works that forwarded the form and then the regional or circle office that received it. The department's Salt Section in New Delhi is reachable in writing at salt-section@gov.in and on 011-23063211, as it publishes on its own circulars.

How winners are picked

Selection process

Merit decides, and it is decided twice. The Regional Officer scrutinises every application received and forwards it with a recommendation, guided strictly by the percentage of marks the applicant obtained in that year's examination. The Salt Commissioner then examines all the applications together and decides which rewards are granted, weighing the marks and the Regional Officer's recommendation in each case. The Salt Commissioner's decision is final, and the guidelines state plainly that no correspondence or appeal lies against it.

There is no committee, no interview and no published score sheet. DPIIT's own write-up records the monitoring and review mechanism for the scheme as nil, and the findings of evaluation as nil.

Fine print

Terms & conditions

The reward is granted once in an academic year, in cash, in one lump sum, for the initial expenses of admission to a recognised institute. Preference among equal candidates goes to SC, ST, BC and backward area applicants. A minimum of half the allocation in a state is held for girls, with reallocation to eligible boys only where no eligible girl applicant exists in that category.

Two conditions deserve a second look before a family invests effort. The Salt Commissioner's decision on a reward is final and cannot be appealed or even queried by correspondence. And the guidelines reserve the right to modify or revoke the scheme at any time by government without assigning any reasons, which is unusually blunt language even for a welfare circular.

Get help

Contact

The scheme is administered from Jaipur and supervised from Delhi. The Salt Commissioner's Organisation head office is at Jaipur, with regional offices at Chennai, Mumbai and Ahmedabad and field offices in the salt producing states, per DPIIT's Annual Report 2024-25.

Applications never go to Delhi, but policy questions do. The Under Secretary, Salt Section, DPIIT sits at Room No. 364, Udyog Bhawan, Rafi Ahmed Marg, New Delhi 110011, and the section publishes salt-section@gov.in and 011-23063211 on its own circulars.

For anything about a specific application, the useful office is the regional or circle office that covers the salt works, because that is where the file physically is between July and August.

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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