The Ministry of Corporate Affairs organizes Investors Awareness Programmes (IAPs) in association with the three Professional Institutes, namely Institute of Chartered Accountants of India, Institute of Company Secretaries of India, Institute of Cost Accountants of India and Common Service Centres (CSC) set up under Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY), both in urban and rural areas, with the objective of creating awareness amongst the investors facilitating informed investment decisions. Special emphasis is laid on the education about fraudulent schemes.  These programmes are conducted in Hindi, English and other vernacular/local languages, depending upon the target audience.

IAPs are specifically organized for rural areas through CSC of DeitY.  During the last two years (2014-15 and 2015-16), 572 such programmes were organised in rural areas. CSCs have been conceptualized as Information Communication Technology enabled, front end service delivery points at the village level by DeitY for delivery of Government, Social and Private Sector Services, and therefore, their services have been utilized under IAPs to educate the population at village level/rural areas regarding, inter-alia functioning of primary and secondary capital markets in order to enhance investor awareness.

The details of the amount allocated and utilized under Investor Awareness and Protection Fund (IEPF) during each of the last three years and the current year is as under:

Year	Funds allocated (Rs.)	Funds utilized (Rs.)
2013-14	4,50,00,000	4,38,10,000
2014-15	3,00,00,000	2,84,24,000
2015-16	4,50,00,000	4,29,93,000 (estimated)
2016-17	1,50,00,000	--Nil---

This was stated by Shri Arun Jaitley, Minister of Corporate Affairs in written reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha yesterday.

Investor Awareness Programmes expand rural outreach; funding and utilization reported under Investor Education and Protection Fund. The Ministry of Corporate Affairs conducts Investor Awareness Programmes with three professional institutes and Common Service Centres to educate investors, emphasize fraudulent scheme prevention, and target rural outreach via CSCs; program funding and annual allocations/utilizations are disclosed from the Investor Education and Protection Fund.