DDU-GKY 2.0 Training to Begin in 14 States from October

What is starting

Placement-linked skill training under the second phase of the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Grameen Kaushalya Yojana begins in October 2026. The Ministry of Rural Development has reviewed how ready the States are, taking fourteen of them in a first round.

Those fourteen are Odisha, Mizoram, Sikkim, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and West Bengal; Himachal Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh; and Puducherry, Karnataka, Telangana and Bihar.

The numbers to hold

Training starts with 1,164 batches covering 34,920 rural young people. Set against that, the sanctioned target for these fourteen States and Union Territories is far larger: 3,57,112 candidates to be trained, with a deadline of 31 December 2027.

Looking wider than the first round, the scheme's own portal shows 24 States and Union Territories have allocated 5.6 lakh targets across more than 1,200 projects. The rest are described as close to finishing their own allocation.

What the scheme is

DDU-GKY is a Centrally Sponsored Scheme aimed at poor rural youth, and its defining feature is that the training is tied to placement rather than ending at a certificate. Course length is not fixed: it runs anywhere from three months to twelve.

Scale of the second phase

Targets under the second phase have gone to all 31 participating States and Union Territories, covering the two-year period the release gives as 2026-28. The Ministry called this a decisive stage for the States and pressed them to move faster on allocating their targets.

Further review meetings are planned in phases, the stated purpose being to get batches started sooner rather than waiting for every State to be ready at once.

Why this comes up in exams

Centrally Sponsored Schemes are standard question material, and this one carries several distinct hooks: the full name behind the abbreviation, the ministry that runs it, the fact that placement is built into the design, and the range of course lengths.