The Indian economy continues to suffer from the problems of poverty, sectoral divergences in growth, and employment opportunities, and a poor progress of various socio-economic indicators despite higher economic growth in recent past. Attaining 100 percent financial inclusion is today one of the biggest challenges for Indian formal banking system. Self Help Groups are important tools of micro-financing system. The formal financial institutions have failed to perform their role of supplying institutional credit to the women folk in our country for undertaking the income generating activities. As a result, a large segment of poverty-stricken people and particularly the women who constitute a significant number remain outside need for the emergence of a new institution to tackle the situation. The Self Help Group-Bank Linkage programme SHG-BLP is a major plank of the strategy for delivering financial services to the poor in a sustainable manner, which was initiated by NABARD. During the last decade, there has been a tremendous growth of SHGs. However, despite the spread and success of SHGs, they suffer from various drawbacks mainly poor management and poor internal control. While NABARD set the direction for the SHG-BLP, there has been very little direction setting for the ongoing support services to SHGs. Similarly, in those states where the SHG-BLP has been well established, the number of groups linked per branch has increased to such an extent that it is making the monitoring and supervision of groups difficult, resulting in falling recovery rates. This empirical research paper is an attempt to assess the progress of SHG-BLP in Andhra Pradesh as well as India.