PENCIL (Platform for Effective Enforcement for No Child Labour) is an online portal that was launched w.e.f. 26.9.2017 to ensure effective enforcement of the provisions of the Child and Adolescent Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986. The portal was created for smooth implementation of the National Child Labour Project (NCLP) Scheme where it connects Central Government to State Government(s), District(s), all Project Societies and the General public.  Further, online complaints regarding child labour can also be filed by anybody on the Pencil Portal; the system then automatically assigns the complaint to the concerned Nodal Officer for further necessary action.

The objective of the PENCIL was:-

• Complaint Corner
• Management of NCLP Society Information
• Monitoring of data from State Resource Center
• Prepare, submit, approve and upload signed Progress Reports
• Upload Utilization Certificate
• Upload other expenses reports of NCLP societies
• Tracking and monitoring of child labour at NCLP society
• View MIS/Dashboards :

2. NCLP scheme has since been subsumed with Samagra Shiksha Abhyan w.e.f 1.4.2021.

3. The platform on which PENCiL was developed in 2017 has become outdated and the platform is not supporting the addition of any of the new features. States/UTs were not on-boarded on this portal. With time, a need was felt for inclusion of additional features along with onboarding of all State/UTs. It may be noted that current PENCiL Portal has active complaint corner where Complaints are being addressed with help of District Nodal Officers (DNO). Division has developed public dashboard for assessing Complaints and NCLP Legacy data, however, it was felt that post subsumption of NCLP scheme, complaints are not being actively registered on PENCiL Portal and DNO list is not getting updated. To get holistic data with respect to Child Labour, Ministry has decided for Integration of PENCiL portal with Mission Vatsalaya/Childline (1098 which currently is in process. Ministry has conducted several rounds of meeting with all stakeholders however, data fields which may be shared is yet to be received from MoWCD.

4. Meanwhile, Bonded Labour Section of MoLE has been merged with Child Labour division where Bonded Labour section does not have any digital ecosystem and it has become difficult for Ministry to track rehabilitation of the rescued Bonded Labour. It may be noted that Ministry is operating Central Sector Scheme for Bonded Labour, where 100% rehabilitation assistance is being reimbursed to States Government in two tranche i.e as Immediate Assistance and as Rehabilitation assistance (linked with summary trial). Further, the issues regarding updating of different data regarding bonded labour has been raised in different forums like NHRC and Parliamentary standing Committee which emphasised on creation of Portal for Bonded Labour.

5. As bonded labour and child labour has some common issues and child labours may be bonded as well, a detailed concept note was prepared based on which it was decided to revamp PENCiL as ‘PENCiL 2.0’ – a unified and comprehensive Child and Bonded Labour portal. The portal shall focus on enforcement of the Acts & Rules and shall also facilitate onboarding of all State/UTs. The portal also envisages seamless integration with different departments/bodies for stringent enforcement.

6. Subsequently it was decided that a composite ToR would be sufficient for hiring a single agency through GeM for revamping/maintenance of Shram Suvidha Portal, Samadhan Portal and Pencil Portal and the same was approved by Secretary(L&E). Accordingly, a Bid No.GEM/2024/B/4659476 was published on GeM portal on 22.02.2024 for hiring of IT services for revamping of three portals (Shram Suvidha Portal, Samadhan Portal and Pencil Portal) operational under this Ministry.

7. The Pre-Qualification and technical evaluation of the Bid is under process in this Ministry.