New Delhi: Several projects cleared under the Nirbhaya Fund are yet to spend a single rupee, even as Rs 1,287.83 crore—about 16 percent—of the Rs 7,990.85 crore set aside for the women’s safety corpus since 2013-14 remains unutilised, according to a written reply tabled in the Rajya Sabha Wednesday.
Among the projects that have drawn no money is the Department of Higher Education’s plan to build accommodation and install CCTV cameras for women students at Delhi University—the department’s only project under the fund, and one that remains “appraised but awaiting approval” of the Competent Financial Authority (CFA).
Two other projects have the same status: A working women’s hostel across three districts of Manipur under the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, and a Ministry of Panchayati Raj proposal to install CCTV cameras at the village panchayat level. A Railways pilot to deploy AI-based facial recognition at seven stations, and a Panchayati Raj programme to sensitise men on women’s issues, are listed as “ongoing” but show zero spending.
The figures were furnished in Rajya Sabha by Minister of State for Women and Child Development Savitri Thakur, in reply to a question by TMC’s Rajeev Kumar, who had asked about the fund’s “long record of underutilisation” and about money for women’s safety that “too often goes unspent or is slow to reach the ground”.
Across 13 years, the government has released and utilised Rs 6,703.02 crore, or 83.9 percent of the total allocation, the reply shows. It reports “released” and “utilised” as a single figure, leaving no way to separate money that has actually been spent on the ground from money merely transferred to implementing agencies.
Shrinking allocation
The annual allocation to the Nirbhaya Fund has been coming down, the government said in Rajya Sabha. At Rs 278 crore, the figure for 2025-26 is the lowest in the fund’s history—down from Rs 1,000 crore in each of the first two years, 2013-14 and 2014-15, and a peak of Rs 1,355.23 crore in 2020-21. Since 2016-17, barring that peak, the yearly figure has stayed between Rs 278 crore and Rs 550 crore.
The reply describes the Nirbhaya Fund as a non-lapsable corpus held in the Public Account and administered by the Department of Economic Affairs, and says allocations are fixed each year “taking into account the balance amount already available” in the corpus. A declining allocation is therefore consistent with unspent money being carried forward. In 2015-16, no fresh allocation was made, yet Rs 26.5 crore was released that year from the standing corpus.
Asked for the reasons behind underutilisation, the reply pointed to process rather than to specific bottlenecks: Projects are demand-driven, follow staggered schedules, and—where expenditure recurs—receive funds only against Utilisation Certificates and Statements of Expenditure under the General Financial Rules, with implementation resting on the concerned ministries, states and Union Territories.
Where fund utilised
The spending that has taken place is concentrated in a few schemes. Three projects account for Rs 4,220.38 crore, or 63 percent, of all funds released—Safe City projects in eight cities (Rs 1,686.73 crore, Ministry of Home Affairs), One Stop Centres (Rs 1,299.10 crore, WCD) and Fast Track Special Courts for rape and POCSO cases (Rs 1,234.55 crore, Department of Justice).
By ministry, three of the 11 implementing agencies—Home, WCD and Justice—together account for Rs 5,874.56 crore, or 88 percent. The remaining eight shared Rs 828.46 crore; the Ministry of Panchayati Raj has spent Rs 0.46 crore across three projects.
(Edited by Viny Mishra)