AICTE - Distinguished Chair Professor Fellowship(DCPF)

Overview

About DCPF

The AICTE Distinguished Chair Professor Fellowship has no application form and no last date. It reaches a professional who has already superannuated, through a nomination AICTE accepts at any point in the year, and it pays only for the days that person actually spends with the students and faculty of an AICTE-approved institute. That shape decides most of what follows: there is nothing for a retired professor to fill in, nothing for an institute to bid for, and no money at all in a year when no lecture day happens.

This is a faculty fellowship, not a student scholarship, and it does not pay a salary. The All India Council for Technical Education created it so that a superannuated professional of standing could be attached to AICTE-approved institutes for lectures and interaction, and the AICTE scheme document states plainly that proposals come by nomination only. The chair professor is the awardee; the institute is the host, not the applicant.

Two features of the award surprise people who read "chair professor" as a posting. AICTE selects ten host institutions spread over various states, in consultation with the chair professor, so the fellowship is a national teaching circuit rather than a seat at one college. And it does not commence on the date of the offer letter: it commences on the date the chair professor accepts and tells the host institute when the lectures will happen, so an offer letter that nobody follows with an agreed date starts nothing.

Who runs it

Provider

At a glance

Key details

Calendar

Important dates

There is no calendar. AICTE publishes no opening date and no closing date for the fellowship, and the scheme document says nominations can be sent throughout the year, so there is no annual cycle to miss and no advertisement to wait for.

One check is still worth making before anyone posts a nomination. The scheme document AICTE hosts carries the date October 2021 and remains the current published version, but the Council's own Faculty Development Schemes page today lists the Distinguished Professional Scheme with a 2024-25 document and does not carry a listing for the chair professor fellowship. AICTE has published no notice withdrawing the scheme either. Write to the Faculty Development Cell and confirm the fellowship is receiving nominations before assembling the paperwork.

Who can apply

Eligibility criteria

Superannuation plus standing is the entire entry test, and the scheme document writes it in three clauses with not one measurable quantity among them: qualification in the nominee's own field, acknowledged leadership in a specialisation backed by active research and development work, and a contribution to society through fieldwork. A nomination therefore has to argue standing rather than tabulate it.

Read what the guidelines do not ask for, because that is where most nominators guess wrong. There is no minimum number of publications, no citation threshold, no minimum years in service, no required last-held rank or pay level, and no requirement that the nominee retired from an AICTE-approved institution at all. Age is the one hard limit, and it enters through the tenure clause rather than an eligibility line: the fellowship runs three years or up to 75 years of age, whichever is earlier, so a nominee close to 75 has very little runway left.

Who cannot apply

Exclusions

AICTE publishes no exclusion list for this fellowship. Nothing in the scheme document bars a nominee by discipline, by the sector they retired from or by the type of institution that employed them, and there is no income test, category quota or state restriction anywhere in it.

Continuation

Renewal conditions

There is no renewal in the ordinary sense, only an extension of age. The fellowship is tenable for three years or the age of 75, whichever comes first, and is extendable till 80 years of age subject to fitness, per the scheme document. The myScheme record adds that the extension may be granted subject to fitness and AICTE approval.

What AICTE has not published is the mechanism. The document names no extension form, no application window and no committee that decides it. The only recurring obligation it places on a serving chair professor is feedback: an annual submission to AICTE, and a further one covering the entire duration, reporting on interventions in research and development, innovation, quality of education and teaching and learning processes. The document stops short of tying that feedback to the extension and names nobody who weighs it, so the years between 75 and 80 rest on AICTE's assessment of fitness rather than on anything the scheme promises in advance.

What you get

Award & benefits

The honorarium is a daily rate, not a stipend, and it is capped by trip rather than by year.

Because the honorarium attaches to a day of interaction and nothing else, a fellowship year in which no visit happens pays nothing at all. The host institute's own outlay stays small for the same reason: AICTE settles the travel and pays the honorarium into the chair professor's account, and what the scheme document leaves with the institute is the administrative and local hospitality arrangements. The fourth row is the one to read twice, because nothing in the two pages opens a research, contingency, equipment or book head. This fellowship buys lecture days and the travel to reach them, not a chair with a budget attached.

• The Fellowship consists of -
• (i) An honorarium of Rs. 10,000/- (Rupees Ten thousand per day) for full-day interaction with the Faculty/ Students of the host institute and nearby located institutions up to a maximum of five days in a single trip.
• (ii) Actual expenses on travel by train / air/ car etc.
• (iii) In Online Mode: An institution is allowed to host only 5 online sessions/talks with only 1 (one) DCP assigned to your institution by AICTE. A session will be a minimum of 2 hours followed by 1 hour of interaction.
• (i) Fellowship is tenable for three years or up to 75 years of age, whichever is earlier.
• (ii) Extension up to 80 years of age may be granted subject to fitness and AICTE approval.

What to prepare

Documents required

The paperwork arrives in two waves and the scheme document writes down only the second. The first wave is the nominator's: AICTE asks that a nomination reach it with all necessary details, so the credentials that establish standing, proof of superannuation among them, travel with the proposal rather than with the awardee. What the document itself specifies is the set that has to reach AICTE immediately after the Letter of Offer arrives, and it is short: a letter of acceptance, a schedule of three to five days of lectures to be delivered through the year, and bank account details including the IFSC code. Only on receipt of those will the Council initiate further action, so a chair professor who accepts the offer verbally and files nothing has stalled their own fellowship.

The schedule is the item that carries weight beyond the paperwork. It commits three to five teaching days across a whole year rather than a single visit, and since a payment is only ever raised against a full day actually delivered, those dates are what the money is measured against.

Step by step

How to apply

Nobody applies. The scheme document puts proposals for the fellowship on a nomination route only, and myScheme records the application mode as offline with no application link published. Nominations with all necessary details can be sent through the year to the Director (Faculty Development Cell), AICTE, Nelson Mandela Marg, Vasant Kunj, New Delhi 110070, or by email to Director.fdc@aicte-india.org.

There is no reference number and no status page, because a nomination never enters a portal in the first place. AICTE's own Faculty Development Schemes page puts an apply route beside the schemes it runs online, the Research Promotion Scheme and the Quality Improvement Programme among them, and carries no listing at all for the chair professor fellowship. The scheme document offers one status signal and no more: the chair professor and the selected host institutions are intimated immediately after the approval of the competent authority of the Council, and the offer letter follows. Until that intimation arrives there is nothing to log into, and a nominator chasing progress is back at the same Faculty Development Cell address the nomination went to.

Payment is chased the same way. The document promises that a format for submitting the bill will be provided and that the amount is paid directly into the chair professor's account, but it names no payment portal, no acknowledgement and no timeline, so an unpaid honorarium is an email to that cell rather than a ticket on a system. AICTE's Distinguished Professional Scheme shows how differently a sibling scheme can be run: its nominations and self-nominations go through a Google form printed in the 2024-25 scheme document.

How winners are picked

Selection process

The chain is short and has one decision point in it. A nomination reaches the Faculty Development Cell, the competent authority of the Council approves it or does not, and the chair professor and the chosen host institutions are intimated immediately after that approval, with the names of the institutes and their contact persons passed on to the chair professor.

Beyond that, the guidelines publish no marking scheme, no committee composition and no ranking rule. The document names the competent authority of the Council as the decider and stops there, so a nomination stands or falls on how convincingly it evidences the three eligibility clauses rather than on anything a nominator can total up.

Fine print

Terms & conditions

Most of the conditions land on the host institution rather than the chair professor. Before a lecture series can run, the scheme document requires an offer letter from AICTE to both the chair professor and the institute, an acceptance letter from the institute in reply, the schedule the chair professor has given for the visit, and the institute's acceptance of that visit together with decent arrangements for accommodation and hospitality. Any special requirement and its funding has to be projected in advance and approved before the visit, not claimed after it.

The clause with teeth is the one on reporting. The offer stays valid for the period named in the request or invitation letter, and where the chair professor repeatedly does not report to the host institution on the stipulated date as agreed, the offer is deemed to be cancelled and withdrawn. Feedback closes the loop at the other end: the chair professor submits it annually and for the entire duration, and the host institution submits its own account of what the visit did for it.

Get help

Contact

Nominations, offer letters and payment questions all go to one desk: the Director (Faculty Development Cell), AICTE, Nelson Mandela Marg, Vasant Kunj, New Delhi 110070, reachable at Director.fdc@aicte-india.org, as printed in the scheme document. Neither the document nor the myScheme record publishes a telephone number or a scheme-specific helpline, so email is the practical route.

Source

Official links

Frequently asked questions

From the official scheme FAQ (myScheme)

Read this

Disclaimer

Disclaimer

Scheme details are compiled from myScheme, the Government of India’s official scheme-discovery platform, and are reproduced without alteration. Amounts, deadlines and eligibility change between cycles, so always confirm on the official links above before applying. Expertie does not process applications or charge fees.

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References

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