Department of Handlooms and Textiles, Government of Andhra Pradesh

Choosing the right scheme

• Free power is for weaver households and powerloom units. It needs a weaver certificate or a Weaver Pehchan Card.
• The thrift fund is for members of primary handloom weavers' co-operative societies. Cash credit goes to the societies themselves.
• MUDRA credit is for handloom weavers and weaver entrepreneurs with a project to finance.
• The insurance schemes are for handloom workers within the stated age bands.

How applications work

• Free power: apply in person at the nearest office of the Assistant Engineer of the concerned section, with the required documents.
• MUDRA: the credit comes from banks, so the application goes to a bank.
• Cash credit: extended through district co-operative central banks.
• Check with the department before you apply. Its pages do not show which schemes are open to new applications on a given date.

Questions the pages leave open

• Intake dates and fees for the Venkatagiri diploma are not on the department's website. Ask the institute directly.
• Eligibility documents for schemes other than free power are not listed.

The Department of Handlooms & Textiles is the Government of Andhra Pradesh's department for the state's handloom and textile sector. It runs state and central schemes for handloom weavers, powerloom units and weavers' co-operative societies, and is based at Mangalagiri. Most of its schemes are for weavers and their co-operatives rather than for new companies, so check eligibility before planning around one.

How the schemes work

The department lists its schemes in two groups on its website: state schemes and central schemes. The state group covers free power for weaver households and powerloom units, a thrift fund for co-operative members, a monthly pension for older weavers, and working-capital credit for weavers' co-operative societies. The central group covers bank credit under the MUDRA scheme, subsidised yarn, a cluster development scheme, the National Handloom Development Programme, and two insurance schemes for handloom workers. The department also runs a three-year diploma institute at Venkatagiri and a weavers' training centre at Hindupur.

Several schemes are delivered through co-operative societies or banks rather than by the department itself. The department's pages do not show which schemes are open to new applications on a given date, so check each scheme with the department before you apply.

Who can apply

Eligibility depends on the scheme. Free power needs permanent residence in Andhra Pradesh and a valid Weaver Certificate from the department, or a Weaver Pehchan Card from the Government of India. The pension is for handloom weavers above the age of 50. The thrift fund is for members of primary handloom weavers' co-operative societies. MUDRA credit is for handloom weavers and weaver entrepreneurs. The two insurance schemes are for handloom workers and labourers, aged 18 to 70 for accident cover and 18 to 50 for life cover.

Some schemes reach individual weavers directly, while the thrift fund and cash credit reach weavers through their co-operative societies. So the first question is whether you are applying as an individual or on behalf of a society. Membership of a society matters for those two schemes, and the pages do not say whether a society must be registered in any particular way beyond being a primary handloom weavers' co-operative.

Scale

The figures on the department's website are its own, and we have not checked them. A 2025 order quoting the Commissioner of Handlooms & Textiles puts the number of handloom weaver households in the state at about 93,000, and the number of powerloom units at 10,534. Elsewhere the website gives about 3.5 lakh handloom weavers. These two figures are not the same unit, and the pages do not reconcile them.

The website also says about 1,282 weavers' co-operative societies exist in the state, and that they cover about half of the state's weavers. In a central One District One Product list, 34 of the 98 products are handloom products. The department's table shows 40,582 weavers benefited under the MUDRA scheme from 2016-17 to November 2024. It reports 31 common facility centres sanctioned under the cluster scheme, with funds released for 16 so far.

Locations

The department is based at Mangalagiri. It has three regional offices, at Rajahmundry, Ongole and Tirupati, set up to decentralise its administration. Its pages give different counts of district offices, so this page does not give one number. The diploma institute is at Venkatagiri, and the weavers' training centre is at Hindupur in Ananthapuramu district.

Who runs it

The department's pages disagree on who heads it. The about page names the Director of Handlooms and Textiles at Mangalagiri as head of the department, while the contact page and the staff listing name the Commissioner of Handlooms & Textiles. This page does not say which is current. The Director of Handlooms and Textiles is also the Registrar of Weavers' Co-operative Societies under state co-operative law.