Millions of nomadic and semi-nomadic families in Uttar Pradesh have long slipped through the cracks of government welfare — no fixed address, no records, no benefits. Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath is now moving to change that, announcing on 6 August 2026 that the Uttar Pradesh Ghumantu Vikas Board will identify multiple communities and actively connect them to state welfare schemes, raising their standard of living.

The Chief Minister's statement, shared by the Chief Minister's Office of Uttar Pradesh, reads: 'Uttar Pradesh Ghumantu Vikas Board anek jaatiyon ko chihnitkar unhe shasan ki vibhinn yojanaon se laabhanvit karte hue unke jeevanstar ko behtar banane ka prayas karega' — 'The Uttar Pradesh Nomadic Development Board will identify several castes, benefit them through various government schemes, and work to improve their standard of living.'

Who the Ghumantu Vikas Board Is Meant to Reach

Nomadic and semi-nomadic communities — historically categorised as denotified tribes — have faced a structural paradox for decades: welfare schemes require documentation, and documentation requires a fixed address that a travelling community rarely has. The result is near-total exclusion from housing subsidies, scholarships, skill-development programmes, and health coverage.

The Uttar Pradesh Ghumantu Vikas Board is a state-level body designed specifically to break this cycle — first by surveying and identifying eligible families, then by acting as a bridge to existing state and central welfare pipelines rather than creating entirely new spending lines.

UP's Pattern of Community-Specific Boards

This is not the Yogi Adityanath government's first move of this kind. Between 2017 and 2022, the Uttar Pradesh administration established several caste and community-specific development boards, each tasked with mapping beneficiaries who had previously fallen outside formal lists. The Ghumantu board follows that same template — identification first, scheme-linkage second.

The approach mirrors efforts in other Indian states that have created dedicated institutional mechanisms for denotified and nomadic tribes, recognising that the bottleneck is rarely the scheme itself but the absence of the community in any official record.

Key details — including the board's formal establishment date, the specific castes to be surveyed, and any fresh budget allocation or convergence with central government schemes for denotified tribes — are yet to be officially released.

For communities that have spent generations invisible to the state, a board that begins with the act of simply counting them may be the most consequential first step of all.