Ambedkar Fellowship Scheme(AFS)

The scheme has no annual calendar date. It opens when the department issues an advertisement, and the directive gives applicants one month from that advertisement to file (Rajasthan SJE directive). The most recent round was advertised for the year 2025 and sent to universities to be pasted on their notice boards, which is where many scholars first see it (Dr. Bhim Rao Ambedkar Law University, notice of the advertisement).

For a scholar this means the watching, not the applying, is the work. A month is not long to obtain a university registration certificate and a state-format income certificate from scratch, so a candidate who expects to qualify is better off holding both before the notice board changes.

Six tests decide the file, and the awkward one is the age clock: the directive measures age on the date the advertisement is issued, not on the date the form is filed (Rajasthan SJE directive).

Two further rules narrow the field. The directive asks only that the master's be passed with the marks stated, but the advertisement the department issued for the most recent round adds that the master's must itself be in one of those same six subjects, so a candidate who changed discipline between the master's and the doctorate falls outside it (Rajasthan SJE directive; Rajasthan SJE, Ambedkar Fellowship advertisement). Preference at selection also goes to scholars registered with central or state government universities in the state, and one family, counted through the parents or guardian, may put forward no more than two children across the scheme (Rajasthan SJE directive).

Holding any other fellowship or financial assistance ends the claim, and the department does not take that on trust. The file has to carry a written commitment on a Rs 100 non-judicial stamp paper that no other department or institution is paying the candidate (Rajasthan SJE directive), and the department's own application form puts the question directly, with a box for the source of any scholarship the applicant is already drawing (Rajasthan SJE, Ambedkar Fellowship advertisement). Part-time doctoral candidates are outside the scheme entirely (myScheme, Ambedkar Fellowship Scheme), which matters in a subject group where many scholars register while holding a teaching or government post.

The directive publishes no renewal step and no second application: the grant runs with the doctorate, and two documents keep it alive. One is a progress report on the research work, filed with the department every year; the other is the attendance certificate in the form the University Grants Commission prescribes (Rajasthan SJE directive). The department does not rest on those alone, because the same directive lets the Director and Special Secretary ask the university itself, from time to time, how the scholar is progressing academically. A copy of the completed research goes to the department at the end, and the directive put the scheme itself in front of the state approval committee for review after its first year.

The fellowship pays Rs 15,000 a month for a maximum of three years (Rajasthan SJE directive); the advertised terms put it as three years or the end of the PhD programme, whichever comes first (Rajasthan SJE, Ambedkar Fellowship advertisement). The directive attaches nothing else to it: no contingency grant for fieldwork, no book allowance, no house rent component, no separate publication support.

The payment route is older than most state scholarships. The sanction is issued by the Director and Special Secretary of the department, and the money is credited to the scholar's own bank account by cheque or demand draft rather than by direct benefit transfer (Rajasthan SJE directive; myScheme, Ambedkar Fellowship Scheme). That is worth knowing before a scholar assumes the money will arrive the way a portal-run scholarship does.

The two items that decide whether a file is complete are both issued by someone else, so they are the ones to start early. The first covers the doctorate: the directive asks for proof of the PhD course the candidate proposes, and the advertisement names the registration certificate issued by the university's research department, together with the research title and outline (Rajasthan SJE directive; Rajasthan SJE, Ambedkar Fellowship advertisement). The second is the income certificate, which the department accepts only in the format the state government prescribes, not in a general-purpose format from another office (Rajasthan SJE directive).

The application form itself asks for more than the certificate list suggests: the supervisor's name, designation, department and email, the stream and title of the research, and an abstract on a separate sheet, which is the research proposal myScheme lists among the documents (Rajasthan SJE, Ambedkar Fellowship advertisement; myScheme, Ambedkar Fellowship Scheme). Treat the abstract as part of the application rather than an afterthought, because it is the only place the scrutiny stage sees what the research actually proposes.

Applications go on paper, to one address. The form and the detailed guidelines are published by the department, completed, signed, and sent with the certificates by email or post to the Secretary, Ambedkar Peeth, Mundala, Jamwaramgarh, Jaipur (Rajasthan SJE directive); myScheme records the scheme as offline with no application link at all, which is the plain fact behind that (myScheme, Ambedkar Fellowship Scheme). The directive publishes secretaryapj@gmail.com for the purpose, and the advertisement adds the departmental mailbox ambedkarfoundation@rajasthan.gov.in beside it (Rajasthan SJE directive; Rajasthan SJE, Ambedkar Fellowship advertisement).

Tracking is the honest weak point of this scheme. The department's online services page lists its e-service portals and the departmental schemes they cover, and this fellowship is not one of them (Rajasthan SJE, online scheme services), so there is no status page to refresh and no application number to quote. Email is the only trail: send the application from an address you monitor, ask the office to confirm receipt in writing, and keep the postal receipt, because the same mailbox is where a query about the sanction or the payment has to go later.

Two committees stand between a complete file and the money. A scrutiny committee checks the applications against the criteria and the state approval committee approves the final list, with a ceiling of six fellowships in a year (Rajasthan SJE directive). There is no entrance test, no interview described in the rules, and no marks-based merit list, which leaves the research proposal and the completeness of the file carrying most of the weight.

The approval committee is senior and cross-departmental rather than a subject panel. The directive seats the additional chief secretaries of social justice and of higher education on it, with finance, the Foundation and one professor nominated by the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Rajasthan from one of the six subjects (Rajasthan SJE directive); the minutes the Peeth circulated with its letter show what that ceiling means in practice, with five applications in the round they cover and a single fellowship cleared (Ambedkar Peeth circular to universities). Those minutes also record proposals to lift the income ceiling, the monthly amount and the number of places, none of which has displaced the Rs 2.50 lakh ceiling, the Rs 15,000 a month or the six places the directive still sets (Rajasthan SJE directive).

The conditions attach to the money, not just to the application. A selected scholar files the admission certificate from the head of the university or institute, the UGC-form attendance certificate, and a progress report each year, and hands the department a copy of the finished research (Rajasthan SJE directive).

The recovery clause is the one to read twice. If the fellowship is misused, the amount paid is recovered with 10 percent interest, and the undertaking to that effect is given at the start on a Rs 100 non-judicial stamp paper (Rajasthan SJE directive). The directive does not define misuse beyond that, so the promise on the stamp paper, that no other department or institution is funding the same doctorate, is the only written limit a scholar signs up to.

Everything about this fellowship runs through one office: the Secretary, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Foundation (Ambedkar Peeth), at Mundala in Jamwaramgarh tehsil, Jaipur district (Rajasthan SJE directive), which the advertisement gives in full with the post office and PIN code, an assistant programmer named as the contact point, and a telephone number alongside the two mailboxes (Rajasthan SJE, Ambedkar Fellowship advertisement).

The Social Justice and Empowerment Department's own site at sje.rajasthan.gov.in carries the scheme page and the guidelines document, and it is where each fresh advertisement is published. Take the departmental copy as the binding text if a university notice board or a listing site says anything different.