Which programme was approved by the Union Cabinet in April, 2025 to develop border villages?
- (a)Sansad Adarsh Gram Yojana
- (b)Vibrant Villages Programme-II (VVP-II)
- (c)Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana
- (d)Deendayal Upadhyaya Grameen Kaushalya Yojana
Correct — B, Vibrant Villages Programme-II (VVP-II).
The Union Cabinet cleared Vibrant Villages Programme-II in April 2025 for the comprehensive development of selected strategic villages in blocks that abut India's international land borders, with an outlay of ₹6,839 crore running up to the financial year 2028-29.
It is the second leg of a Home Ministry programme. VVP-I, approved in February 2023, took up villages in blocks abutting the northern border; VVP-II picks up blocks on the remaining land borders, in 17 States and Union Territories.
The idea to carry away is that border-village development is run by the Ministry of Home Affairs as border management, not as a rural-development scheme — the money goes to village infrastructure, livelihoods and connectivity so that people stay put on the frontier.
- (a)Sansad Adarsh Gram Yojana — Sansad Adarsh Gram Yojana is a Ministry of Rural Development scheme launched in October 2014, and it is not a border-village programme, so it is not the April 2025 Cabinet decision the stem asks about.
Its unit is a Gram Panchayat adopted by a Member of Parliament and developed as a model village, chosen without reference to any border. It is the right answer to a question about MPs adopting a Gram Panchayat to develop it as an 'Adarsh Gram'.
- (c)Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana — Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana dates from December 2000 and builds all-weather roads to eligible unconnected rural habitations across the country, not in a defined set of border villages.
It does receive fresh Cabinet decisions for its successive phases, so the mere fact of a Cabinet approval is not what identifies it. It is the right answer to a question about all-weather road connectivity for unconnected rural habitations.
- (d)Deendayal Upadhyaya Grameen Kaushalya Yojana — Deendayal Upadhyaya Grameen Kaushalya Yojana, launched in September 2014, is a skilling scheme under the Ministry of Rural Development that trains rural youth from poor households and places them in wage employment.
It works on people rather than on the physical development of selected villages, and it applies no border criterion. It is the right answer to a question about placement-linked skill training for rural youth.
Border-village development is a security-driven strand of policy. Villages in blocks touching an international land border are funded ahead of ordinary norms so that residents stay, and the frontier is held by a settled population rather than left thinly peopled.
The Vibrant Villages Programme is the instrument for this. Its funds go to village infrastructure, road and digital connectivity, livelihood and value-chain work and border-specific outreach in a selected list of villages.
It sits with the Ministry of Home Affairs because border management is that ministry's subject, which is what separates it from the rural-development flagships it is easily confused with.
Two phases of the same programme now run side by side, and questions turn on telling them apart. VVP-I, approved in February 2023, covers blocks abutting the northern border; VVP-II, approved in April 2025, covers blocks on the other international land borders.
For Uttarakhand the split is not academic. The state's high-Himalayan blocks facing the northern border came in under VVP-I, while Uttarakhand also figures in the VVP-II list, where its qualifying blocks are the ones along the Nepal border.
That makes the programme a live Uttarakhand subject rather than a distant Delhi announcement.
- The Union Cabinet approved the Vibrant Villages Programme-II in April 2025, with a total outlay of ₹6,839 crore up to the financial year 2028-29.
- VVP-II covers selected strategic villages in blocks abutting India's international land borders other than the northern border already taken up under VVP-I.
- 1,954 villages, in 351 blocks across 102 districts of 17 States and Union Territories, have been identified for development under VVP-II.
- VVP-II was approved as a Central Sector Scheme, unlike VVP-I, which is Centrally Sponsored.
- VVP-I was approved on 15 February 2023 as a Centrally Sponsored Scheme with an allocation of ₹4,800 crore for the financial years 2022-23 to 2025-26.
- VVP-I villages lie in blocks abutting the northern border in Arunachal Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Uttarakhand and the Union Territory of Ladakh.
- The Vibrant Villages Programme is implemented by the Ministry of Home Affairs, which handles border management.
- VVP-II aims to saturate all villages in the selected blocks in four thematic areas — all-weather road connectivity, telecom connectivity, television connectivity and electrification — alongside livelihood and value-chain work.
Both phases are Ministry of Home Affairs border-village schemes; the highlighted row is the split the stem tests.
- The words 'Gram' and 'Grameen' pull the eye towards rural-development schemes, but the programme built for border blocks is the one named for villages on the border.
- Treating VVP-II as a simple extension of VVP-I to the same villages erases the one thing that separates them — which land border the block abuts.
- A launch year of 2000 or 2014 does not by itself rule an option out — those schemes still get Cabinet approvals for later phases. What rules them out is that none of them is a border-village programme.
- PMGSY keeps receiving Cabinet approvals for successive phases, so 'a Cabinet decision exists' is not enough; the decision has to be the April 2025 one on border villages.
- VVP-I's ₹4,800 crore and VVP-II's ₹6,839 crore are easy to swap, as are their end years, 2025-26 and 2028-29.
The plainest form is the one here: a purpose and a month-and-year of approval, with four programme names to choose from, where the stated purpose — developing border villages — does the discriminating.
It also comes as statement pairs on outlay, implementation period, implementing ministry or coverage, with one detail quietly carried across from VVP-I to VVP-II.
A third form pairs schemes with their ministries, which rewards knowing that this one belongs to Home Affairs while SAGY, PMGSY and DDU-GKY belong to Rural Development.
CAPF_GAI_2025_Q12025Same demand — fix a national scheme to the Union Cabinet approval that created it, there the National Green Hydrogen Mission's approval year. What differs is the form, a statement pair to be verified rather than a single name to be recalled, and the subject, energy transition rather than border management.
UPPSC_2020_PRE_GSI_Q652020Also a Union Cabinet decision pinned to a date, the National Education Policy of 29 July 2020. It goes further than this item by asking who drafted the policy and what it replaced, while the UKPSC item stops at naming the programme correctly.
UPSC_2026_GS1_Q992026Tests a scheme's parameters — implementation period, objective and central funding share for the Revamped RGSA — which are the same kinds of detail that separate VVP-I from VVP-II. It differs in subject and reach: panchayat capacity-building nationwide, not village development confined to border blocks.
- practice — not a real PYQ
The Vibrant Villages Programme-II, approved by the Union Cabinet in April 2025, is meant for villages located in blocks abutting which of the following?
- (a)The northern border, already covered under Vibrant Villages Programme-I
- (b)India's international land borders other than the northern border
- (c)India's coastline and island territories
- (d)The Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir
Answerb — VVP-II was approved for selected strategic villages in blocks abutting international land borders other than the northern border, which VVP-I had already taken up.(a) states the coverage of the earlier phase, not the 2025 one. (c) shifts to the maritime coast, whereas the programme is defined by land borders. (d) confines the scheme to one stretch of one border, while its village list runs across 17 States and Union Territories.
- practice — not a real PYQ
The Vibrant Villages Programme is implemented by which Union Ministry?
- (a)Ministry of Rural Development
- (b)Ministry of Home Affairs
- (c)Ministry of Defence
- (d)Ministry of Panchayati Raj
Answerb — border management is the Ministry of Home Affairs' subject, and the Vibrant Villages Programme is run from there.(a) runs the rural flagships such as PMGSY, SAGY and DDU-GKY, but not this programme. (c) is responsible for the armed forces rather than for the civil development of border villages. (d) works on Panchayati Raj institutions and their capacity, as under the Revamped RGSA.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Vibrant Villages Programme-I, approved in February 2023, covered villages in blocks abutting the northern border in which of the following groups of States and Union Territory?
- (a)Arunachal Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Uttarakhand and Ladakh
- (b)Punjab, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Jammu and Kashmir
- (c)Assam, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Tripura
- (d)Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Manipur
Answera — these are the States and the Union Territory whose blocks abut the northern border, and they are the ones VVP-I was approved for in February 2023.(b) lists the States along the western frontier with Pakistan. (c) lists north-eastern States whose international boundaries lie with Bangladesh, Bhutan or Myanmar. (d) mixes States facing Nepal, Bangladesh and Myanmar. Blocks in such States fall on the VVP-II side of the split.