Assistance for Purchase of Educational Instruments for Medical, Engineering and Technical Diploma Courses(APEIMETDC)

Overview

About APEIMETDC

A Scheduled Tribe student who has just taken a seat in MBBS, in a degree engineering programme or in a technical diploma is asked for instruments and stationery in the same weeks as the admission fee. Gujarat's Tribal Development Department runs a separate cash line for that purchase rather than folding it into the post matric scholarship, and it sizes the line by the course the student joined rather than by the bill produced.

The department's own scheme table names the line "VKY 164 Instrumental Assistance for First Year Students of Medical, Engineering, Diploma Courses" and sets its eligibility as study in the first year of that course, on the Directorate of Tribal Development guideline for Scheduled Tribe students. The name carries the condition most write ups of the scheme leave out. The myScheme entry for the same scheme describes the assistance as annual and running for the duration of the course, so a student counting on a payment in a later year has two published answers in front of them and should put the question to the district office before budgeting on either.

The heading has also moved. An earlier edition of the same departmental table headed the benefit Financial Assistance to Purchase of Instruments and other Stationary for Medical and Engineering Students (Directorate of Tribal Development, online application guidance), while the district service directories that mirror the portal now list it under the VKY-164 wording (Student Corner, District Surat). Searching the dropdown for the older title is one way to conclude, wrongly, that the scheme has gone.

Who runs it

Provider

At a glance

Key details

Calendar

Important dates

The department announces one window a year on the portal's notice board, and the Scheduled Tribe window is not the Scheduled Caste and OBC one.

A closed window has been reopened before, though for one caste group and one past year rather than for everybody: the portal carried a reopening of 2025-26 filing for remaining Scheduled Caste students (Gujarat State Scholarship Portal). Nothing lets a Scheduled Tribe applicant file late on the strength of that, and because the claim belongs to the first year of the course, the window that falls in the year of admission is the only one it gets.

Who can apply

Eligibility criteria

What decides most of these applications is the course year rather than the marks. The department's table attaches the grant to students in the first year of a medical, engineering or diploma course, so a repeat year, a lateral entry into the second year of a diploma, or a change of college after the first year all fall outside it (Directorate of Tribal Development guideline for Scheduled Tribe students).

Income is the second gate, and this line sits on the higher of the two ceilings the department works with. Its table puts the instrument grant and the food bill line at families below Rs 6.00 lakh, while the umbrella post matric scholarship and its freeship card variant are written for families below Rs 2.50 lakh (Directorate of Tribal Development guideline for Scheduled Tribe students). A household refused the umbrella scholarship on income can still be inside this one.

Two certificates decide the file before anything else does, and the rule about them is about issuance rather than content: only a caste certificate and a guardian's income certificate issued by a competent authority may be uploaded (Directorate of Tribal Development, online application guidance). A quieter condition catches new entrants in particular. A course that does not appear in the portal's menu under the student's institution cannot be selected at all, and the fix runs through the college: the student reports it, the institution enters the course against its own portal account, and the selection becomes available a short while later.

Who cannot apply

Exclusions

Nothing in the scheme record answers this, so the disqualifiers a Scheduled Tribe applicant actually runs into are the ones the Directorate writes into its filing guidance instead.

Two of them punish an incomplete filing rather than an ineligible student. A form left short of Confirm and Final Submit is not an application, and one sent online but never followed to the institution's counter as a signed printout with self attested copies behind it is not taken up either. Misstatement is on a different scale altogether: a student who enters something false or conceals something loses the right to fill a scholarship form again and is blacklisted for scholarship, and the guidance separately asks students not to attempt a duplicate application (Directorate of Tribal Development, online application guidance).

The last disqualifier is not written as one, and it fires after the sanction rather than before it. Payment on every line of this list runs into the bank account seeded to the student's Aadhaar number, so an account left unoperated long enough for the bank to mark it dormant, or one that has been frozen, stops the credit while the application itself stays cleared and correct (Directorate of Tribal Development, online application guidance).

Continuation

Renewal conditions

Nothing in the year's guideline attaches a continuation step to this line. There is no renewal form against it, no progress report, no continuation certificate and no academic condition to keep satisfying, which is what separates it from the maintenance and tuition lines above it in the same table (Directorate of Tribal Development guideline for Scheduled Tribe students).

Renewal mode exists on the portal, but not for this. It reopens last year's sanctioned post matric application for a continuing student so the details are checked rather than typed again (Directorate of Tribal Development, online application guidance), and a first year instrument claim has no earlier file for it to reopen. Whether the grant itself can be drawn a second time is the point on which the department's table and the scheme record part company, and a district office sanctions against the guideline in force for the year of the application.

What you get

Award & benefits

The grant is a single cash transfer graded by course, the medical rate standing above degree engineering and degree engineering above the technical diploma (Directorate of Tribal Development guideline for Scheduled Tribe students). It is for equipment rather than upkeep, which is what the earlier edition of the table said in its own title: financial assistance to purchase of instruments and other stationary for medical and engineering students (Directorate of Tribal Development, online application guidance).

Where the money lands separates this from the scholarship lines beside it. Every scheme on the department's list for the year is paid into the bank account seeded to the student's Aadhaar number and enabled for direct benefit transfer, and the guidance states plainly that no student is paid any scholarship offline. The instrument grant carries no tuition component to route anywhere else, so the whole of it is a credit in the student's own name and nothing about it passes through the college's account.

• Financial Assistance Amounts: Medical Students: ₹15,000 annually.
• Engineering Students: ₹10,000 annually.
• Diploma Students: ₹5,000 annually.

What to prepare

Documents required

The record's short list of proofs is the floor rather than the whole. What a first year applicant meets at the Attachment tab is a set of conditions on the form each paper takes, published in the Directorate's filing guidance rather than in the scheme description.

• Every year of every course since Class 10 has to go up, in order, as that year's final marksheet, and the same sheets go into the paper set handed to the institution.
• A guardian in government service adds the income tax form his employer issues to the income certificate.
• Where study stopped for a while after Class 10, the file needs a signed undertaking covering the gap: no course pursued in it, and no scholarship drawn.
• A student living in a hostel downloads the hostel certificate from the form's own Instruction page and returns it carrying the hostel authority's signature and seal.
• The annual fee receipt, a certificate from the competent authority where the student has a disability, and a marriage certificate where a woman student is married.

The guidance wants each scan taken off the original document, and permits a copy only where an original is genuinely unobtainable (Directorate of Tribal Development, online application guidance).

Step by step

How to apply

The address has changed and the old one still works. The year's guideline sends applicants to https://gssp.gujarat.gov.in, and the same forms open from https://www.digitalgujarat.gov.in by taking Scholarship Services out of the Services drop-down (Directorate of Tribal Development guideline for Scheduled Tribe students). The account is the same either way, so a student who registered in an earlier year signs in rather than registering again.

A first time applicant opens Login/Register, chooses Citizen Login and then New Registration (Citizen), and registers on a mobile number and an email ID. Keep the number working: the OTP that opens the account and every later message about the payment go to it, and a number that has been lost is replaced only by establishing identity at the district office.

Inside the account, Request a New Service opens the year's list arranged department by department, live schemes shown in green and closed ones in red. Take the Tribal Development Department block and the instrument line inside it, then fill Registration Detail, Bank Details, Academic Details, Disability Detail and Attachment before Verify Mobile Number and Confirm and Final Submit. The One Time Registration number from the National Scholarship Portal is compulsory only on the Government of India umbrella post matric scholarship, so it is not a blocker on this form (Directorate of Tribal Development guideline for Scheduled Tribe students).

Final Submit moves the application into the school, college or institution login and closes it to the student. The paper leg follows: a printout, self attested copies of everything uploaded behind it, and the whole bundle lodged at the institution's own counter. Where the institution has not acted on it yet, Withdraw in the student's own login takes the file back for correction; once it has acted, the institution has to return it. A student who cannot fill the form gets it keyed in at an e-gram centre at village level (Directorate of Tribal Development, online application guidance).

Checking on it later. Scholarship Service Requests inside the account takes a financial year and a Show button, and brings up the applications filed in that year (Directorate of Tribal Development guideline for Scheduled Tribe students). When a file has cleared and the money has not arrived, the answer is usually not on the scholarship portal at all. NPCI's Bharat Aadhaar Seeding Enabler, under the Customer section of https://www.npci.org.in, reports the Aadhaar Mapped Status, meaning which bank account the student's Aadhaar currently points at; where it points at an account nobody uses, the same facility reseeds it, and the guideline says that step is being brought onto the Bank Details page of the application itself.

How winners are picked

Selection process

Nothing about this grant is competitive. The Directorate publishes no ranking, no qualifying mark and no quota against it, and what stands between a correct application and a sanction is verification: the institution certifies the file from its own login and forwards it, and the district office takes it from there.

Two things decide which desk the file reaches, and the student sets both. A first year student who mistypes the institution, or takes the neighbouring entry out of the course menu, sends the file somewhere it will simply sit, and the guidance leaves that consequence with the applicant. So does the state field, because a student who picks any state other than Gujarat under Current Address State in Registration Detail is recorded as studying outside Gujarat (Directorate of Tribal Development, online application guidance).

A student genuinely enrolled outside Gujarat carries that extra leg for real. Copies of every document have to be attested by the institution and deposited at the concerned district office in hard copy alongside the online form (Directorate of Tribal Development guideline for Scheduled Tribe students), and where that outside institution is private, payment is considered only once it has been empanelled (Directorate of Tribal Development, online application guidance).

Fine print

Terms & conditions

The bank account carries most of the conditions. It has to be seeded to the student's Aadhaar, enabled for direct benefit transfer, and neither closed nor dormant, and the guidance puts the consequence of a wrong account number on the student, including the case where the money reaches somebody else's account. Where two banks have merged, the passbook or cheque uploaded is the one showing the new IFSC and the new account number (Directorate of Tribal Development, online application guidance).

The rest are administrative and unforgiving. The guideline caps a student at one application per Aadhaar number, which makes the choice of line in the dropdown a decision rather than a first attempt (Directorate of Tribal Development guideline for Scheduled Tribe students). The session end date entered under Academic Details is the annual date obtained from the institution and not a semester date. And the guidance closes by saying its contents are for guidance, with the binding reading resting on the government resolution behind the scheme, which is the document to ask the district office for when a case is genuinely borderline.

Get help

Contact

Portal trouble and scheme trouble go to different places. An account that will not open, a form that will not save or an upload that will not stick is the help desk's: the portal publishes a toll free number, 18002335500 (Gujarat State Scholarship Portal helpdesk). Anything about eligibility, or a file stuck after the institution forwarded it, belongs with the Assistant Commissioner (Tribal Development) in the student's own district, which is the office the guidance names (Directorate of Tribal Development, online application guidance).

Above the districts sits the Directorate, Tribal Development Department, on the first floor of Birsa Munda Bhavan, Sector-10/A, Gandhinagar, which publishes ctdgujarat@gujarat.gov.in and +91 79 23257703 as its contacts (Commissionerate of Tribal Development).

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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