Nirbhaya Fund at 2026: Assessing Allocation, Utilisation and Implementation

Policy Update
Angela Rajeev

Background

Affirmative Action and Empowerment become synonymous when the conversation of Women’s rights is brought to the fore. The former cannot be looked into in isolation without the latter. Especially in these trying times as the question of Women’s safety is brought into national cognizance it becomes important to scrutinize the existing policies we have in place for women and how we can better our institutions to changing priorities.

The Nirbhaya Fund was announced in the 2013 Union Budget and it was given a budget of ₹ 1000 crore. The need for this nirbhaya fund was highlighted after the gruesome 2012 Delhi gang rape and murder case which shook the country over women’s safety (Deccan Herald, 2022a). It would be a defining moment in the nation’s memory that completely altered the course of the need for women centric laws. It’s a non lapsable corpus administered by the Department of Economic Affairs. The Ministry of Women and Child Development is the nodal ministry that appraises schemes as well as reviews its progress (PRS Legislative Research, 2023). 

A parliamentary committee has stressed that the Fund was meant for long-term schemes that enhance women’s safety and not just act as instruments of compensation (The Statesman, 2017). The corpus transferred to the Public Account stood at ₹3,100 crore by 2017-18 (The Statesman, 2017). The latest committee report records ₹8,212.85 crore provided since inception (Rajya Sabha Secretariat, 2026).

Key milestones include approval of pilot Safe City projects in eight metros (Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai, Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad & Lucknow) at a total cost of ₹2,919 crore (Press Information Bureau [PIB], n.d.). Moreover, it received central assistance for Fast Track Special Courts (FTSCs) from 2019 (MWCD, 2025). The intended beneficiaries are women and girls across the country.

Functioning

Projects originate with a sponsoring ministry or State and go to the inter-ministerial Empowered Committee (EC) for appraisal. Once the sponsors Competent Financial Authority approves – the Ministry of Finance allocates funds from the Nirbhaya corpus within the sponsor’s budget (Lok Sabha, 2026). Schemes are demand-driven with staggered implementation schedules. The EC reviews progress but delivery rests with sponsoring ministries and States (Lok Sabha, 2026).

Most projects run through States or UTs and with the Centre releasing money per each scheme’s sharing pattern. for recurring expenditure, further instalments follow Utilisation Certificates (UCs) and Statements of Expenditure (SoEs) under the General Financial Rules (MWCD, 2025). Safe City projects are centrally sponsored at a 60:40 Centre-State ratio. Moreover, Delhi is fully centre-funded. Fund flow is now tied to SNA-SPARSH which is a just-in-time release module that makes later installments conditional on States’ digital documentation (The Policy Edge, 2026).

Between 2014 and 2021 the Fund approved 35 projects across 10 ministries and departments (Deol, 2022). Major components are MWCD’s One Stop Centres (OSCs), Women Helpline 181 and Mahila Police Volunteers (Nyaaya, n.d.) , the Ministry of Home Affairs ERSS-112 , women help desks, anti-human trafficking units , cyber-crime prevention and Safe City projects. The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways vehicle tracking platform , the Department of Justice’s FTSCs & a one-time ₹200 crore grant to the Central Victim Compensation Fund (Lok Sabha, 2026; MWCD, 2025).

Performance

Allocation and release. Cumulative provision rose from ₹6,212.85 crore in 2021 to ₹7,712.85 crore up to 2024-25 (MWCD, 2025). Soon this figure would rise to ₹8,212.85 crore by March 2026 (Rajya Sabha Secretariat, 2026). Each step is exactly ₹500 crore and consistent with a flat annual provision. The share released improved from about 66 percent to 80 percent (refer to Table 1).

Table 1: Allocation and release under the Nirbhaya Fund. Source: MWCD (2021, 2025)

Utilisation. In 2021 ₹2,871.42 crore of ₹4,087.37 crore released was reported utilised at 70 percent (MWCD, 2021). By March 2025 the ministry reported nearly 76 per cent of allocation as released and utilised while cautioning that spending may be understated because States have not always submitted UCs and SoEs (MWCD, 2025). Earlier panel figures (₹9,549 crore allocated, ₹2,989 crore utilised) rest on a different base & cannot be compared directly with these series (Deccan Herald, 2022b).

Budget execution. The Budget Estimate for 2025-26 was ₹500 crore but the Revised Estimate fell to ₹278 crore (a 44 per cent cut). The Standing Committee attributed this to non-compliance with SNA-SPARSH guidelines and delays in bill submission by States/UTs, and flagged a ₹1631 crore gap between provision and release (Rajya Sabha Secretariat, 2026; The Policy Edge, 2026). For the ministry’s flagship schemes generally it questioned the claim that States draw funds slowly & asked whether the single-nodal-agency mechanism itself restricts flow (Rajya Sabha Secretariat, 2026).

Physical outputs. By March 2025 14,658 women help desks , 827 anti-human trafficking units, cyber forensic-cum-training labs in 33 States and UTs with 24,264 persons in all 36 States/UTs handling over 43 crore calls and 745 operational FTSCs . It had disposed of over 3.06 lakh rape and POCSO cases (MWCD, 2025). By 30 June 2026, 991 OSCs were operational and had assisted over 15.20 lakh women since 2015, Women Helpline 181 had assisted over 1.04 crore women, and 661 OSCs were integrated with the helpline (Lok Sabha, 2026). As of March 2025 this is 189 more centres and roughly 41 per cent more women assisted (Rajya Sabha Secretariat, 2026).

Safe City and states. The eight Safe City projects carry a central outlay of ₹1,951.11 crore yet Gun Shot Detection in Delhi and forensic labs in Hyderabad remained partially operational (Rajya Sabha Secretariat, 2026). Spending is uneven. Delhi was the largest beneficiary at ₹413 crore over five year and ahead of Uttar Pradesh (₹305 crore), Tamil Nadu (₹304 crore), Maharashtra (₹254 crore) and Karnataka (₹228 crore) (Deccan Herald, 2022). Madhya Pradesh had ₹320.71 crore utilised up to 2025-26 (Lok Sabha, 2026).

Impact

The Fund has built service infrastructure at scale with lakhs of women reaching OSCs and helplines (Lok Sabha, 2026). Evidence on outcomes is thinner. In 2022 a parliamentary panel noted that violence against women had not reduced despite legal frameworks and institutions (Deccan Herald, 2022b) and in 2026 the Standing Committee asked for a third-party assessment of the impact and outcomes of OSCs (Rajya Sabha Secretariat, 2026). The Committee observed that OSCs have become de facto short-stay homes rather than one-stop facilities, and that Women Helpline 181 functions as a call centre without ground-support teams for rescue (Rajya Sabha Secretariat, 2026).

In 2022, vehicles bought by Mumbai Police under the Fund were reportedly used to provide Y-plus security to legislators (Business Standard, 2022). Reports said police bought 220 Boleros, 35 Ertigas, 313 Pulsar motorcycles and 200 Activas using a ₹30 crore corpus. 47 Boleros were requisitioned for escort duty and 17 later returned (Asianet Newsable, 2022).

Earlier, a 2019 analysis found States had used only 11.1 per cent of their allocation (Factly, 2019). A Vidhi Centre study found just three projects (Safe City, FTSCs/e-POCSO courts and OSCs) account for about 64 per cent of the Fund (Nyaaya, n.d.). MIT-based researchers put Safe City alone at 68 per cent and warn that AI facial recognition in law enforcement run surveillance can be inaccurate and biased (Data + Feminism Lab, n.d.).

Emerging Issues

The ₹1,631 crore gap and the 44 per cent RE cut show provision is not converting into spending.MWCD should work towards helping States migrate to SNA-SPARSH through a Compliance Support Cell as the Standing Committee recommends (Rajya Sabha Secretariat, 2026). The ministry says UCs and SoEs lag actual spending (MWCD, 2025) and reported figures mix released, utilised and allocated amounts across years. Hence, the Ministry of Finance and MWCD should publish one public series of provided, released and UC-verified spending.

Three projects take about two-thirds of the Fund (Nyaaya, n.d.) and some Safe City technology remains incomplete (Rajya Sabha Secretariat, 2026). Hence, the EC should run city-specific quarterly audits and set deadlines for AI-based video analytics and facial recognition, as the Committee proposes (Rajya Sabha Secretariat, 2026). OSCs act as short-stay homes and the helpline lacks ground teams (Rajya Sabha Secretariat, 2026). It should be a topmost priority to place police support and legal aid inside OSCs, link the helpline to rescue teams and allocate OSC staff by caseload (Rajya Sabha Secretariat, 2026).

The Maharashtra vehicle episode (Business Standard, 2022) and earlier panel warnings against spending on routine construction (Deccan Herald, 2022b) show weak purpose-checks. States should tag Fund-financed assets in public registers and there should be independent audit of Fund projects. Heavy spending on AI-enabled monitoring raises bias and privacy concerns (Data + Feminism Lab, n.d.). MHA should mandate accuracy testing, data-protection rules and community consultation before deployment. Some States cannot pay their share under centre-state funding patterns, which slows schemes (Rajya Sabha Secretariat, 2026). Review should consider cost-sharing as the Committee recommends.

Way Forward

Twelve years after its announcement the Nirbhaya Fund needs to be judged by whether women are actually safer. Not by how much has been sanctioned or how many centres exist. The way forward is to rebuild the Fund around accountability and the experience of survivors.

Fix the delivery system first. Delays in releasing money, utilisation certificates and weak state capacity undermine every scheme. The Ministry of Women and Child Development should set up a dedicated compliance and technical support unit. releases should be tied to verified progress rather than to the calendar. States that perform well should get timely funding and those that lag should get hands-on support.

Make the Fund transparent. A public dashboard should show state wise and project wise allocation , release and verified spending. along with service data such as cases handled and response times. Civil society can scrutinise performance as it unfolds.

Evaluate before expanding. Schemes should be independently evaluated against clear outcome indicators such as reporting rates, response times, conviction support and survivor satisfaction and a dedicated performance audit by the Comptroller and Auditor General would add credibility. 

Join up the response on the ground. Survivors should not have to move between agencies. This means that the onus of grievance redressal should not be placed on the survivors themselves but rather the state must act as facilitators of timely justice dispersal. One-Stop Centres, helplines, emergency response, police, health services, counselling and legal aid should work as one chain with shared protocols.

Look beyond metros and beyond response. Rural, tribal and small-town women and women with disabilities need access too. The Fund should also support prevention such as safer public transport, lighting, school, workplace awareness & community-level engagement. so that safety is built into places rather than provided only after harm.

Protect the purpose and the people. Fund-financed assets should be registered and used only for their intended purpose, with real consequences for diversion. Surveillance-based components should come with privacy-by-design, bias testing, data-protection limits and grievance redress so that women are not made safer in one way and exposed in another.

Invest in the workforce. Counsellors, para-legal staff, police gender-sensitisation and fair pay for frontline workers decide whether services are used, and they deserve sustained funding rather than one-time capital grants.

Taken together, these steps would turn the Nirbhaya Fund from a pool of earmarked money into a measurable, survivor-centred safety system.

References

Asianet Newsable. (2022). Controversy over use of Mumbai Police SUVs bought under Nirbhaya Fund for Y-plus security to CM Shinde’s MLAs

Business Standard. (2022, December 11). Vehicles bought under Nirbhaya Fund diverted for security to Shinde faction

Data + Feminism Lab. (n.d.). A woman’s place is in a safe city: Designing feminist cities through Nirbhaya Funds. Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Deccan Herald. (2022a). Interactive | How Nirbhaya Fund has been utilised over the years

Deccan Herald. (2022b). Panel notes ‘gross underutilisation’ of Nirbhaya Fund

Deol, T. (2022, December 16). 10 years of Delhi gang rape: 70% of released Nirbhaya Funds utilised, Lok Sabha told. Down To Earth.

Factly. (2019). Nirbhaya Fund: Projects worth ₹6755 crores approved, only 20% utilized

Lok Sabha. (2026, August 7). Unstarred question no. 3294: Safety and security of women through the Nirbhaya Fund. Ministry of Women and Child Development, Government of India.

Ministry of Women and Child Development. (2021). Utilisation of Nirbhaya Fund. Press Information Bureau.

Ministry of Women and Child Development. (2025, March 12). Government implements schemes under Nirbhaya Fund to enhance women’s safety and security, utilizes nearly 76% of Nirbhaya Fund. Press Information Bureau.

Nyaaya. (n.d.). Working of the Nirbhaya Fund in India

The Policy Edge. (2026, March 25). 377th report on Women and Child Development: Parliamentary panel flags 55% vacancy rate in NCW

Press Information Bureau. (n.d.). Safe City Project

PRS Legislative Research. (2023). Demand for grants 2023-24 analysis: Women and child development

Rajya Sabha Secretariat. (2026, March 25). Press release on the 377th report of Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education, Women, Children, Youth and Sports. Press Information Bureau.

The Statesman. (2017). Nirbhaya funds under-utilised, committee tells Parliament

About the Contributor

Angela Rajeev is a graduate in Political Science and History, with a minor in Economics, from Christ University, Bangalore. She approaches her research with a passion for gender, public policy, and geopolitics. As a Research and Editorial Intern at IMPRI, she works at the intersection of policy and culture while exploring issues related to governance, society and international relations.

Acknowledgements

The author extends sincere gratitude to the IMPRI team for their guidance and support along with the reviewers Ms. Himanshi and Ms. Tanisha for their valuable feedback and insights.

Disclaimer: All views expressed in the article belong solely to the author and not necessarily to the organization

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