India / Unemployment Insurance / Uttarakhand removes the cap of one person per family

The Uttarakhand government today decided to liberalise norms for the unemployment allowance scheme in the face of stinging criticism from the opposition.

The scheme, which was launched with much fanfare on November 9 last year, had failed to find favour with the jobless mainly due to its stringent norms. The scheme had covered only 834 youths, or a tiny 0.11 per cent of the total population of the hill state,  within the first one month of its launch. This, despite Chief Minister Vijay Bahuguna’s claim that the government received nearly 4,000 applications.

In order to accommodate more beneficiaries, a meeting of the state cabinet held at secretariat here decided to raise the limit of the family income from Rs 1.5 lakh to Rs 2.5 lakh for getting the allowance, chief secretary Alok Kumar Jain said.

Jain said the cabinet also decided to remove the cap of one person per family under the new norms. Earlier, only the eldest applicant in a family was entitled for such allowance.

Choosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor from

via Norms for unemployment allowance in Uttarakhand freed.