AICTE-PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT SCHEME(PDS)

Overview

About PDS

The AICTE Professional Development Scheme pays a teacher back, never in advance. A full time regular faculty member at an AICTE approved institute who already holds an acceptance letter for a conference paper can recover up to Rs 1.5 lakh of what the trip costs, and the money moves only after the journey is finished and the claim has gone up through the head of the institution (AICTE Professional Development Scheme document). The application is not something the teacher files either. It goes in from the institute's own login on the AICTE web portal, filed under the scheme code TGS.

Nothing in the name says so, but the beneficiary here is a serving teacher rather than a student. The council's stated purpose is to let meritorious faculty and its own officers meet the field at international level by presenting a paper, at conferences held abroad and within India. Officers of AICTE at the rank of Assistant Director and above, on regular or deputation basis, are inside the scheme alongside institute faculty.

The scheme answers to more than one name in the council's own paperwork, which is the first thing that trips people up. The scheme document calls it the Professional Development Scheme. The advertisement that invited applications for it calls it the AICTE-Professional Development Scheme (Travel Grant) (AQIS financial support for 2021-22). The user manual an institute has to follow is titled Travel Grant Scheme, TGS is the code in the portal's own dropdown, and the AQIS handbook files the predecessor as Travel Grant. It is one grant under whichever label the document in front of you happens to use.

How active it is right now is a fair question, and the council's pages do not answer it in one voice. The current Faculty Development Schemes page, maintained by the Training and Learning Bureau, runs through the bureau's faculty initiatives and does not include the Professional Development Scheme among them. The older Opportunities for Faculty page still carries the scheme document, the user manual, the approved conference list and a working apply link. Nothing AICTE has published says the scheme is closed. It has never been a large one either: the AQIS Guidelines and Process Handbook records the predecessor Travel Grant reaching 31 beneficiaries in 2012-13, with Rs 18,71,356 released against it in that year. The test that settles it is whether TGS still appears in the scheme dropdown when an institute opens a fresh AQIS application, because that dropdown is where the council's current configuration actually shows.

Who runs it

Provider

At a glance

Key details

Calendar

Important dates

The council gave this scheme no opening date and no closing date. When it advertised its AQIS financial support for 2021-22, every other faculty scheme in the table ran from 14-11-20 to 31-12-20; in those two columns against the Professional Development Scheme, AICTE printed Round the year.

The dates that bind are set by the event instead. The proposal goes in three months before the conference, and the reimbursement claim goes in within two months of the visit being completed. The predecessor scheme allowed only one month after the return journey for the claim, so the current window is the more generous of the two.

Who can apply

Eligibility criteria

Eligibility is tested twice, and the second test is stricter than the first. The scheme document asks for a full time regular faculty member from an AICTE approved institute or an AICTE approved university department with at least 5 years of existence, an applicant who has not taken this grant in the last three years, and an acceptance of the paper already received from the conference organiser.

The portal then applies a harder rule to the institution. The council's Travel Grant Scheme user manual states that if the institute applying for TGS does not have at least 10 Years of Existence with AICTE, an error message is displayed and the application does not proceed. A department that clears the scheme document's five-year line can still be stopped by the portal's ten-year one, so the institution's approval history matters more here than the wording of the scheme suggests.

The same manual blocks the application if the faculty record picked from the institute's approved staff list is anything other than full time and regular. That record is pulled from the institution's own extension of approval data, so a teacher whose appointment type is filed on the portal as temporary, adhoc or contractual is refused at the form, whatever the appointment letter says.

An older requirement has quietly gone. The council's earlier Travel Grant - Faculty document required the applicant's host department to be NBA accredited. The current scheme document drops that condition, though the portal still asks the institute to declare whether the relevant UG or PG course is NBA accredited when the application is filled.

Who cannot apply

Exclusions

The scheme document publishes no separate exclusion list, so what functions as one has to be read out of its terms and out of the AQIS rules that sit above every council grant.

An online event is the clearest case. Where the workshop, conference or seminar is held in online mode, AICTE releases only the registration fee, so a virtual presentation cannot draw travel money or a per day allowance. A grant sanctioned for one conference cannot be moved to another purpose, and the earlier travel grant document put the same rule more bluntly: a grant sanctioned to attend a specific conference cannot in any case be used to travel abroad for a different one.

Booking early is at the applicant's own risk. Under AICTE's methodology and general guidelines for AQIS schemes, nothing spent before the approval letter is issued, and nothing spent after the project's tenure has run out, can be set against the grant-in-aid. And a rejection closes the door on that specific event: where an application for a particular date and a particular venue has been rejected, the council will not consider it again and will not entertain correspondence about it.

Continuation

Renewal conditions

Nothing here renews. Each conference is a fresh application, and the gate between two of them is the three-year bar in the eligibility clause rather than any annual cycle.

The scheme document carves out one exception to that bar, and it is the only route to a second grant inside the three years. A candidate who has taken the grant under Group D, for a conference within India, remains eligible for international support within the same three-year period, minus the amount already used on the domestic trip. So a Rs 50,000 domestic grant does not exhaust the window; it reduces what is left in it.

What you get

Award & benefits

The ceiling is set by where the conference is, not by what the applicant asks for.

The group ceiling is a cap and not an entitlement. What the applicant actually receives is the lowest of three figures: the amount fixed for the country group, the average of what the assessing experts recommend, or the expenditure actually incurred.

One head the form invites is missing from the list the scheme pays. The Assistance from Council tab offers Stay as a head of expenditure, alongside travel, per day allowance and registration fees. The scheme document's reimbursable list names three things and accommodation is not one of them: the conference registration fee, a per day allowance for the days of the conference plus the actual journey period at central government rates, and the total cost of travel from the international airport to the destination airport and back. That gap is worth knowing before a hotel bill is built into the number the institute asks for.

The domestic ceiling has moved once. AICTE's July 2020 version of the scheme document fixed the within-India group at Rs 40,000, where the version the council links today puts it at Rs 50,000. That earlier version also had no place for AICTE's own officers, who were added to the eligibility list afterwards.

• Limit of Funding: Up to ₹ 1,50,000/-
• Disbursement of the Funds: The grant will be disbursed on reimbursement basis on receipt of claim form along with relevant documents. Total grant will be based on the recommended group of countries with fixed financial effect as follows:-
• Group A : North America, Australia, South America, New Zealand : ₹ 1,50,000/- - Group B : Europe, Far-East Asia, Japan, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea,& Africa : ₹ 1,20,000/- - Group C: Neighboring Countries, Gulf Countries & SE Asia:₹ 1,00,000/- - Group D : Within India: ₹ 50,000 - Group E : Conferences which are not covered under the above Groups (Group A-D) will be evaluated by the committee Amount recommended as per group of countries or Average of amount recommended by the experts,
• Actual expenditure incurred, whichever is lesser will be entitled.
• Reimbursement of the following expenditures will be granted: Registration fee for conference.
• Per Day, allowance (Days of the conference plus actual journey period) asper the central government rules.
• Total expenses towards travel from international airport to destination airport and back.
• Note: In case a candidate has availed grant in Group D, individual is still eligible to avail this grant for international support (with in a period of three years) minus the amount utilized for with in India.
• In case of the workshop/conference/seminar being held in online mode, AICTE will only be releasing the registration fee.
• Terms and conditions: The applicant has to perform the journey by Air India only, unless Air India gives an official certificate that there is no flight on the concerned sector (either of Air India itself or in collaboration with some other airlines). In case, journey is performed by any other airline, the airfare approved will not be released.
• Applicant should submit only one proposal at a time.
• In case an application of a candidate for a particular event (for a Particular date as well as a particular venue) is rejected, the same shall not be considered again and no correspondence in this regard shall be entertained by the Council.
• The grant offered cannot be utilized for any other purpose other than the purpose for which granted.
• Application should be submitted three months in advance.

What to prepare

Documents required

The long document list attached to this scheme is a reimbursement list, not an application list. The application is filled as portal fields; the paperwork lands afterwards, in the prescribed proforma, sent to AICTE through the head of the institution within two months of the visit being completed.

Part of that list has to be arranged before or during the journey, which is why reading it on the flight home is too late. The certificate from Air India naming the shortest approved route has to exist, and where no Air India flight served the sector, the airline's official certificate saying so has to be obtained for that particular date. The voucher showing the rate at which foreign currency was bought is the other one, and nobody keeps it by accident.

There is also a wording mismatch inside the council's own document that an institution should read carefully. Eligibility bars an applicant who has taken the grant in the last three years, but the certificate the head of the institution has to sign at claim stage asks for confirmation that the applicant has not availed the travel grant during the last two years. The safer reading is the eligibility clause, since that is the one the portal tests. The covering form matters as much as the annexures behind it: in the chapter of the AQIS Guidelines and Process Handbook that governs the predecessor travel grant, a claim whose reimbursement form has not been endorsed by the head of the institution is simply not entertained.

Step by step

How to apply

The teacher does not have a login here. The application starts from the institute's credentials on the AICTE web portal, on the AQIS Application screen, and the manual makes one step of that sequence unforgiving: until the institute's bank details have been saved and then separately confirmed, nothing on the screen will start an application at all.

From there the institute creates a fresh AQIS application, picks TGS from the scheme dropdown, and selects the faculty member from the approved staff list so the personal and academic fields populate from the approval record. All six tabs that apply to this scheme are mandatory before the application will validate: AQIS Application Details, Travel Plan Details, Financial Assistance, Academic Credentials of Coordinator, Justification, and Assistance from Council. The last of those carries an arithmetic rule worth knowing before the form is opened, because it rejects late: what the council is asked for, added to what other agencies are giving, has to come to the total expenditure entered. The run ends with the Validate Application button and the upload of a downloaded, filled Mandate Form.

There is no separate status page to bookmark afterwards. Status is one of the fields that auto-populates on the AQIS application itself, beside the application id and the duration, and every application the institute has filed sits on the All AQIS Application Information view, with a notification control on the portal for messages the council sends. Once a grant is sanctioned the portal stops being the channel: AICTE's general guidelines require every letter about a sanctioned project to quote the file number assigned to it and the year of sanction, and to be addressed to the bureau head.

The timing rule sits outside the portal and governs everything above it: the application should be submitted three months in advance of the event.

How winners are picked

Selection process

Whether a proposal is judged at all depends on a list. Processing runs against AICTE's approved conference list, and only where a conference is absent from that list does the proposal go to an expert committee of three members, none below the rank of Associate Professor. The council's revised approved conference list runs to 819 numbered entries, each tagged with its country, its continent, the organising body and the funding group it falls into, so checking the target conference against it is the fastest way to know which route the application will take.

The scoring sheet is public. The proforma cum evaluation sheet that AICTE's AQIS Guidelines and Process Handbook publishes for the travel grant splits 100 marks evenly: 50 for the applicant's credentials, where a PhD, published papers, completed research and consultancy projects and teaching experience each carry their own weight, and 50 for the conference and the paper, where the theme's relevance and the novelty of the work carry 10 marks apiece. A proposal is recommended only at a grand total of 70 or above, and the marks an expert awards override the marks the system computes from the institute's own declarations.

That bar is stricter than the council's default. AICTE's general AQIS methodology sets the qualifying line at an average of 60 percent across three experts unless a scheme specifies otherwise, and this one specifies otherwise. Above the experts sits a central committee that verifies the recommendations before any grant is released, and the final qualifying list is limited by the number of projects sanctioned for that scheme in that year. The guidelines close with the condition that governs all of it: the actual release of grants is subject to availability of funds.

Fine print

Terms & conditions

The airline clause is the one that costs people money. The journey has to be performed by Air India, and the only escape is an official certificate from Air India confirming there was no flight on that sector, either its own or in collaboration with another airline. Fly another carrier without that certificate and the approved airfare is simply not released, leaving the applicant with a sanction that pays for registration and per day allowance and nothing for the ticket. The earlier travel grant document added a class rule the current one leaves out: shortest route, economy or excursion class only, with the Air India fare certificate enclosed with the proposal.

Only one proposal may be live at a time, and a grant cannot be spent on anything other than what it was sanctioned for. The general AQIS conditions add the sanction that applies to the institution rather than the individual: where information in a proposal is later found to be false or incorrect, AICTE may withdraw the grant, recover the whole amount with interest, and decline to consider future proposals from that institute or university department.

Get help

Contact

AICTE publishes no separate helpdesk address for this scheme, so the routing in the scheme document is the route. Everything travels through the head of the institution, who forwards the claim in the prescribed proforma, and correspondence on a sanctioned case is addressed to the bureau head quoting the file number. The only postal address the scheme's own paperwork carries belongs to the council itself, printed at the head of the advertisement that invited these applications: Nelson Mandela Marg, Vasant Kunj, New Delhi - 110070, telephone 011-29581000.

There is a point past which the council stops replying. On an application rejected for a particular event, date and venue, the council states that no correspondence will be entertained.

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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