Swachh Bharat Mission (Grameen) Phase-II Extended to March 2028: ODF Plus, Budget and Rules, Explained

The Centre has extended Swachh Bharat Mission (Grameen) Phase-II until March 2028, so the government can allocate around Rs 7,000 crore for the rural sanitation scheme in Union Budget 2027-28. That is the lead of a report by Harikishan Sharma in The Indian Express, updated at 2:30 pm IST on 4 November 2026.

The same report quotes a Finance Ministry order that puts a hard stop on the calendar: remaining villages must get an ODF Plus certificate by 31 March 2028, and no further time extension beyond that date would be considered. On the scheme dashboard cited in the story, 5.70 lakh of 5.86 lakh villages have already been declared ODF Plus.

The 60-second version

• What: Swachh Bharat Mission (Grameen) Phase-II extended until March 2028.
• Why the date matters for the budget: The extension lets the Centre allocate around Rs 7,000 crore in Union Budget 2027-28 (The Indian Express).
• Who asked, who agreed: Sources cited by The Indian Express say DDWS (Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation, Ministry of Jal Shakti) sought Finance Ministry approval, granted on Tuesday. The story was updated on 4 November 2026, so that Tuesday is 3 November 2026.
• The order: Remaining villages must get an ODF Plus certificate by 31 March 2028. The quoted order says no further extension beyond that date would be considered.
• ODF Plus, in the DDWS definition used by the report: The village sustains ODF status, ensures solid and liquid waste management, and is visually clean.
• Dashboard: 5.70 lakh of 5.86 lakh villages declared ODF Plus so far.
• How Phase-II got here: Union Cabinet approval on 19 February 2020. First scheduled to end in 2024-25, later run until the end of the 15th Finance Commission period, and approved for implementation until March 2027. The new end point is March 2028.
• Money already on the books: Overall outlay approved in 2020: Rs 1,40,881 crore. DDWS budget share: Rs 52,497 crore. Spent from the DDWS budget, 2020-21 to 2025-26: Rs 28,726 crore. Allocation for 2026-27: Rs 7,192 crore.
• Cost share: 90:10 for northeastern and Himalayan states, including Jammu and Kashmir. 60:40 for other states. 100:0 for Union Territories.

What the March 2028 extension changes

The Indian Express frames the decision as a time extension with a budget consequence. Phase-II now runs until March 2028. That window is what allows an allocation of around Rs 7,000 crore in the Union Budget for 2027-28.

Two money figures in the same story should not be collapsed into one:

• Rs 7,192 crore is the allocation for the 2026-27 financial year. That year is already under way. The report does not say this sum has been fully spent.
• Around Rs 7,000 crore is the amount the extension allows the government to allocate in Union Budget 2027-28. The report does not present it as a demand for grants already voted.

The report also says DDWS must ensure that all villages achieve the required Open Defecation Free (ODF) Plus status, within the programme's overall outlay, by the end of March 2028. The certificate deadline and the "no further extension" line sit inside the outlay already approved for the scheme. The 4 November story does not announce a fresh overall outlay on top of the 2020 figure.

The Finance Ministry order, and who sought it

According to sources cited by The Indian Express, DDWS under the Ministry of Jal Shakti approached the Finance Ministry for approval of the extension, and the approval was granted on Tuesday. Sharma's copy was updated at 2:30 pm IST on Wednesday, 4 November 2026. Read against that timestamp, Tuesday is 3 November 2026. The report does not quote a separate order number or a clock time for the grant.

The Indian Express quotes the Finance Ministry order in two clauses:

• "DDWS shall ensure that remaining villages get ODF plus certificate by 31st March 2028."
• "No further time extension beyond 31st March 2028 would be considered."

The paper prints an ellipsis between those clauses, so this page does not treat them as one uninterrupted sentence. Both clauses are attributed to the order as quoted. The practical reading in the report is a deadline for the villages still short of the certificate, and a bar on another extension after 31 March 2028.

What ODF Plus means, and the village count

The Indian Express quotes the DDWS definition of an ODF Plus village as "a village which sustains its ODF status, ensures solid and liquid waste management and is visually clean."

That is three tests, not a toilet count alone: the village keeps its open-defecation-free status, it has solid and liquid waste management, and it is visually clean. The report uses that definition for the Phase-II standard the remaining villages are supposed to meet.

On the dashboard, the paper says 5.70 lakh of 5.86 lakh villages have been declared ODF Plus so far. A straight subtraction of those two published figures is 0.16 lakh, or 16,000 villages. Both inputs are rounded to two decimal places of a lakh, and the report does not add a separate official count of villages still waiting. Treat 16,000 as the gap on the printed dashboard figures, not as a third statistic from DDWS.

The order's phrase is "remaining villages." The report does not name them, list states that are behind, or say how many certificates were issued in any single year.

How Phase-II reached this deadline

The Indian Express traces the scheme's second phase to a Union Cabinet decision chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 19 February 2020.

The same report sets the calendar out in three marks:

1. Phase-II was initially scheduled to end in 2024-25.
2. It was later extended until the end of the 15th Finance Commission period. The scheme was approved for implementation until March 2027.
3. The decision reported on 4 November 2026 extends it until March 2028, with the Finance Ministry order saying no further extension beyond 31 March 2028 would be considered.

The report states the 2024-25 end and the March 2027 approval in consecutive sentences. It does not spell out a separate Cabinet note for the shift from 2024-25 to March 2027.

The outlay, the spend, and the next budget line

In 2020, the Centre approved an overall outlay of Rs 1,40,881 crore. Of that, Rs 52,497 crore has to be provided from the DDWS budget, The Indian Express reported. The rest was planned to be dovetailed from funds released under the 15th Finance Commission, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, and revenue generation models, particularly for solid and liquid waste management.

The word in the report is "planned." The 4 November story does not audit how much of the non-DDWS share has actually been drawn from the Finance Commission, the employment scheme, or village-level revenue models.

What the report does give as spent money is narrower than the full outlay. It is DDWS-budget spend only:

Item	Figure in The Indian Express, 4 November 2026
Overall outlay approved in 2020	Rs 1,40,881 crore
Share to be provided from the DDWS budget	Rs 52,497 crore
Spent from the DDWS budget, 2020-21 to 2025-26	Rs 28,726 crore
Allocation for 2026-27	Rs 7,192 crore
Sum the March 2028 extension allows in Union Budget 2027-28	around Rs 7,000 crore

The six-year spend of Rs 28,726 crore is not the full Rs 1,40,881 crore, and it is not a balance sheet of the Finance Commission or employment-scheme shares. The Rs 7,192 crore line is an allocation for 2026-27, not a statement that the whole of it has been spent. The around Rs 7,000 crore line is the budget consequence of the new extension. Adding those rows into a single "money left" number would go beyond what the report calculates, so this page does not.

Who pays: 90:10, 60:40, and 100:0

Under Swachh Bharat Mission (Grameen)-II, The Indian Express says, the Centre and states share the cost of all components in these ratios:

Where	Centre:state ratio reported
Northeastern and Himalayan states, including Jammu and Kashmir	90:10
Other states	60:40
Union Territories	100:0

The report does not publish a state-wise release table, and it does not list every Himalayan state by name beyond including Jammu and Kashmir in that group. On the wording of the ratio itself, Union Territories are at 100:0, so the central share is the whole of the shared cost for those components in the UTs.

What to watch next

1. Union Budget 2027-28. Whether the around Rs 7,000 crore the extension is meant to allow actually appears as a DDWS allocation. The 4 November report describes the room to allocate it, not a line already passed.
2. The certificate deadline. Whether remaining villages get an ODF Plus certificate by 31 March 2028, which is the date in the Finance Ministry order quoted by The Indian Express.
3. The dashboard gap. The cited dashboard shows 5.70 lakh of 5.86 lakh villages declared ODF Plus. Any later official count is the number to use. The 16,000 gap is only the subtraction of those rounded figures.
4. The hard stop. The quoted order says no further time extension beyond 31 March 2028 would be considered. That is a Finance Ministry line, as reported, not a political forecast.
5. 2026-27 spend against Rs 7,192 crore. The report gives the allocation. It does not give expenditure for the current year.
6. The other funding legs. The 2020 design planned to dovetail 15th Finance Commission funds, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, and revenue models for solid and liquid waste. The spent figure of Rs 28,726 crore is the DDWS budget share only.

Phase-II now runs to March 2028 so a Union Budget 2027-28 allocation of around Rs 7,000 crore can be made. The Finance Ministry order, as quoted by The Indian Express, ties that time to an ODF Plus certificate for the villages still short of one, and says no further extension beyond 31 March 2028 would be considered. The dashboard figure in the same report is 5.70 lakh villages declared ODF Plus out of 5.86 lakh.

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This explainer is drawn from The Indian Express report by Harikishan Sharma, "Flagship rural sanitation scheme extended, set to receive Rs 7,000 crore in Budget," updated at 2:30 pm IST on 4 November 2026: https://indianexpress.com/article/india/swachh-bharat-mission-grameen-phase-2-extension-2028-10950286/ . The Tuesday approval is attributed to sources in that report. The ODF Plus definition is the DDWS wording as quoted there. The Finance Ministry lines on the 31 March 2028 certificate and on no further extension are quotations from the order as printed by The Indian Express, which places an ellipsis between them. The 5.70 lakh and 5.86 lakh village counts are the dashboard figures in that story. The 16,000 gap is a subtraction of those published rounded figures, not a separate official leftover count. Outlay, spend, 2026-27 allocation, cost-share ratios, and the February 2020 Cabinet date are from the same report. This page does not add state-wise shortfalls, a new outlay, or a claim that the around Rs 7,000 crore has already been voted.