One Stop Centre Scheme (Sakhi)

The One Stop Centre Scheme, popularly branded Sakhi, was launched by the Government of India's Ministry of Women and Child Development (MWCD) on 1 April 2015 as a centrally sponsored sub-scheme of the National Mission for Empowerment of Women, later folded under the umbrella Mission Shakti framework announced for the 2021–26 period. Its conceptual origin lies in the recommendations of the Justice J. S. Verma Committee constituted after the December 2012 Nirbhaya gang-rape case, which urged the state to create accessible, coordinated services for survivors of sexual and gender-based violence. The scheme is financed entirely from the Nirbhaya Fund, a non-lapsable corpus established in the 2013–14 Union Budget and administered by the Ministry of Finance, with the MWCD acting as the nodal appraisal authority. It operationalises India's obligations under domestic statutes including the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act 2005, the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act 2013, and the POCSO Act 2012.

Procedurally, the scheme establishes a physical facility—ideally located within or near a district hospital—that any woman or girl facing violence, irrespective of age, class, caste, religion, marital status, sexual orientation or location, may approach directly, be referred by police or institutions, or reach through the Women Helpline 181. On arrival a survivor is received by a Centre Administrator and case workers who triage her needs. The Centre offers five integrated service lines under a single roof: emergency medical assistance and facilitation of medico-legal examinations; police facilitation, including the lodging of an FIR; legal aid and counselling through the District Legal Services Authority; psychosocial support and counselling; and temporary shelter for up to five days. Each case is documented, and the survivor's informed consent governs which services she chooses to access, preserving her agency throughout.

The scheme's design contemplates variants scaled to district caseloads, originally categorised by the volume of cases reported, and it integrates tightly with the Women Helpline (181), which functions as a 24-hour single emergency referral number connecting callers to the nearest Centre. Video-conferencing facilities permit survivors to record statements before magistrates and depose remotely, reducing re-traumatisation. The Centre is staffed by a multidisciplinary team including the Centre Administrator, case workers, paralegal volunteers, counsellors, and IT and multipurpose staff. Funding is released as 100 per cent central assistance through the Nirbhaya Fund for most states, with the Union Territories receiving full central support; the operational and recurring costs flow to states and districts that establish the facilities and report utilisation.

By design the scheme targets saturation coverage of every district. Successive sanction expansions raised the approved number of Centres beyond 700, with the MWCD reporting that more than 700 Centres were operational and that they had collectively assisted several lakh women since inception. Operationally significant deployments include Centres functioning across states such as Kerala, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Delhi, frequently co-located with district government hospitals. The 2021 restructuring under Mission Shakti's "Sambal" component placed One Stop Centres, the Women Helpline and the Beti Bachao Beti Padhao initiative within a unified administrative architecture, and subsequent announcements extended the model to international locations to assist Indian women in distress abroad through select missions.

The One Stop Centre must be distinguished from adjacent mechanisms with which it is frequently conflated. It differs from a Swadhar Greh or Shakti Sadan shelter home, which provides longer-term institutional residence and rehabilitation rather than the 72-hour-to-five-day emergency stay the Centre offers. It is also distinct from the Protection Officer machinery under the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act 2005, which is a statutory court-linked role; the Centre instead aggregates services and facilitates access to such officers. Unlike the Women Helpline, which is a telephonic referral and counselling service, the Centre is a physical, walk-in facility delivering in-person medical, forensic and shelter functions. The model echoes the international "one-stop crisis centre" concept pioneered in Malaysia and South Africa and endorsed in WHO guidance on health-sector responses to violence.

Implementation has attracted scrutiny. Parliamentary committee reviews and audits have flagged under-utilisation of sanctioned funds, vacancies in counsellor and administrator posts, inconsistent co-location with hospitals, and uneven awareness among the public and police. Reports by civil-society organisations have documented Centres operating without adequate shelter rooms or trained staff, and gaps in inter-departmental coordination between health, police and legal-services authorities. The reliance on Nirbhaya Fund disbursement has periodically drawn criticism over slow release and low absorption by states. The 2021–26 Mission Shakti guidelines sought to address these by standardising staffing norms, mandating district-level monitoring, and integrating data through the Helpline and dashboards.

For the working practitioner—a civil servant at the District Collectorate, a desk officer in the MWCD, a legal-services paralegal or a policy researcher analysing gender-budgeting—the One Stop Centre Scheme is a frequently examined instance of convergence-based service delivery, a recurring UPSC General Studies Paper I and II topic touching women's empowerment, governance and welfare-scheme design. Understanding its Nirbhaya Fund financing, its statutory backdrop, and its integration within Mission Shakti enables practitioners to assess service gaps, advocate for staffing and infrastructure, and benchmark India's survivor-centred response against international one-stop-crisis-centre standards. Its evolving record offers a case study in translating post-2012 reformist intent into operational machinery at the district level.