Award of Pre-Matric Scholarship to Other Economically Backward Class (OEBC) Students(APMSOEBCS)

Overview

About APMSOEBCS

Other Economically Backward Class reads like the name of a community list, and the Directorate of School Education's own application form treats it as the opposite. The certificate printed at the back of that form tells the Revenue Official signing it that scholarships to Lower Income Group students are awarded from available funds namely on poverty basis without any consideration of the caste, and asks him to issue it with due caution so the money reaches students who are really poor and in need of financial assistance (application form, Directorate of School Education). The form still keeps a box for the student's caste or community. What decides the award is the page behind it, and the award it unlocks is deliberately small: a fixed monthly figure paid for ten months to hold a child in the classroom through the middle and secondary years.

The scholarship has run as a Puducherry state scheme since 2005-06, with two objectives the rules state plainly: financial assistance for OEBC students to complete their education up to secondary school level, and avoiding the drop out of those students for lack of it (Directorate of School Education, Puducherry). Where it is filed inside the Directorate says more about how it is worked than the objectives do. The students' welfare list splits the school scholarships into three groups, one under the Joint Director (Higher Secondary), one under the Deputy Director (Elementary Education), and a third of seven awards under the Senior Accounts Officer, which is where this one sits alongside the NCC cadet, Rashtriya Indian Military College and Sainik School awards (Students' Welfare Schemes, Directorate of School Education). An accounts desk owns it, not an academic wing.

The money is released region by region rather than in one order. For the year 2025-26 the Directorate accorded expenditure sanction for this award in three separate orders: one for schools under the Joint Director (Secondary Education) in the Puducherry region, one for schools under the Deputy Director (Women Education) and the Chief Educational Officer, and one for the schools of Karaikal, Mahe and Yanam (notice board, Directorate of School Education). A family in Yanam is waiting on a different signature from a family in the Puducherry region.

Who runs it

Provider

At a glance

Key details

Calendar

Important dates

The window is announced rather than scheduled. Each year the Directorate posts a circular on its notice board inviting applications under the state scholarship schemes, the way it did for the academic year 2026-27, and no date of its own is attached to the award on the rules page or on the scheme record (notice board, Directorate of School Education). The dated events at the far end of the cycle are the sanctions, and for 2025-26 there were three of them rather than one, so the OEBC calendar is really three regional calendars sharing a single set of rules (notice board, Directorate of School Education).

Who can apply

Eligibility criteria

Income and promotion are the two tests that actually decide a case. Annual family income must be Rs 75,000 or below, and the pupil must be studying in standard VI to X and must have secured promotion to the next higher class (Directorate of School Education, Puducherry). What the rules leave out matters just as much. No percentage bar, no attendance condition and no conduct clause appears anywhere in them, so a pupil who scraped a pass stands on the same footing as a ranker. That is not a hypothetical contrast: the OBC pre-matric guidelines running in the same union territory demand at least 35% marks in the previous year examination and ask that the student be regular in attendance with good conduct (Guidelines for Pre Matric Scholarship to OBCs, Puducherry, National Scholarship Portal).

The five year domicile test is the one families read too quickly. Being an Indian citizen does not by itself qualify a child here. The certificate at the back of the form asks a Revenue Official to state that the student is a native of Puducherry by virtue of birth or by a continuous residence of not less than five years, which makes it a Revenue Department finding and not something a school can record on its own (application form, Directorate of School Education).

Who cannot apply

Exclusions

This award disqualifies nobody by category. Neither the scheme record nor the Directorate's rules page publishes an exclusion list, and the bar that actually pulls a case out is printed on the application instead. Above the school seal, the headmaster or headmistress certifies that the student is not in receipt of any other scholarship from other sources and that this case has not been recommended previously (application form, Directorate of School Education). Both statements are the school's to make. A second award held quietly is therefore caught in the school office, before any proposal reaches the Directorate.

Continuation

Renewal conditions

The rules publish no renewal clause and the printed form offers no way to claim one: its declaration says the applicant is applying for fresh scholarship, and there is no continuation box beside it (application form, Directorate of School Education). The regions still work the award in two streams, and Yanam's education schemes list names them, describing the pre-matric scholarship to OEBC students from 6th to 10th standard as fresh and renewal (Education Schemes, Yanam, Government of Puducherry). What carries a child from one year to the next, then, is the promotion condition inside the eligibility rule, which is why a detained year ends the run instead of pausing it.

What you get

Award & benefits

The rate follows the class band and nothing else. It does not rise with need, with marks, or with the number of children a family has in school.

Both bands are granted for ten months in an academic year, which is where the yearly column comes from (Directorate of School Education, Puducherry). Nothing is attached to either rate. The rules carry no hostel component, no book or uniform grant and no extra instalment for the board examination year, and the form asks the school to enter the whole entitlement as one line, the scholarship amount per annum (application form, Directorate of School Education).

• For standards 6 to 8: ₹50 per month per student (₹500 per year per student).
• For standards 9 & 10: ₹75 per month per student (₹750 per year per student).
• _ For ten months in an academic year._
• Mode of Disbursement
• The amount is disbursed directly into the Aadhaar-seeded bank account of the applicant through Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) and Public Financial Management System (PFMS).

What to prepare

Documents required

Nativity, citizenship and income are not three separate certificates here. They are combined onto one page at the back of the application, and that page has to be signed by a Revenue Official not below the rank of a Tahsildar or Deputy Tahsildar of the taluk or sub-taluk concerned, which puts the decisive signature outside the school altogether. Where that certificate cannot be produced, the form permits what it prints as a Permanent Integrity Certificate (PIC) in its place (application form, Directorate of School Education). The scheme record lists the same abbreviation under a different expansion, so it is worth handing the school the form's own wording and letting it say which document its region actually accepts.

Banking is the other place a sanctioned file stops moving. The account number and the IFSC code the form asks for are the student's, as is the Aadhaar number recorded beside them, and there is no field anywhere on the page for a parent's account (application form, Directorate of School Education).

Step by step

How to apply

Two filing routes sit on the record and they do not meet in the middle. One belongs to the Directorate, whose rules hand the proposal to the head of institutions and take it in google forms rather than on paper (Directorate of School Education, Puducherry). Its notice board shows that route still live, in the invitation it issued under the state scholarship schemes for the academic year 2026-27 (notice board, Directorate of School Education). The scheme record describes the other, listing offline and online modes and pointing a citizen at the union territory's e-District portal to register and apply there. Ask the school which of the two it is using this year before filling anything in, because the family's own paperwork does not change: the printed OEBC application, signed by the student and by the father, mother or guardian, and countersigned by the headmaster or headmistress under office seal (application form, Directorate of School Education).

Status is the weak joint, and the form itself shows why. It carries no acknowledgement box and no reference number field anywhere on the page (application form, Directorate of School Education), while the e-District status screen returns nothing without an application number to type into it (Track Application, e-District Puducherry). A family that applied online holds that number. A family whose school submitted the google form does not, and its question belongs with the desk that owns the scheme, the Senior Accounts Officer on 0413-2207330 (Contact Us, Directorate of School Education). The public marker for the money is the expenditure sanction order for the region, which the Directorate posts on its notice board once that year's amount is released (notice board, Directorate of School Education). After it, the credit travels by DBT through PFMS into the Aadhaar seeded viable bank account of the approved beneficiary, and that seeding is done at a bank branch rather than at the Directorate (Directorate of School Education, Puducherry).

How winners are picked

Selection process

Nobody is ranked against anybody else. The rules say the Directorate grants scholarship to all the eligible students, and in the same sentence that this will also depend on the availability of funds in the budget of the year (Directorate of School Education, Puducherry). Selection is therefore a verification exercise run over the proposals the schools send, and the event that turns a verified pupil into a paid one is the expenditure sanction for that pupil's region rather than a place on any list.

Fine print

Terms & conditions

Three conditions travel with the award and none of them is negotiable at the school's end. Ten months, not twelve, is the paid year, which is why Rs 50 a month reaches a family as Rs 500 and Rs 75 a month as Rs 750. The grant is made subject to the availability of funds in the budget of the year, so a tighter allocation reaches every eligible pupil at once rather than a shortlist of them. And the amount can be paid only into the Aadhaar seeded viable bank account of the sanctioned or approved beneficiary, by DBT through PFMS, which puts an unseeded account outside the only channel the Directorate uses (Directorate of School Education, Puducherry).

Get help

Contact

The desk that controls this scheme is named on the Directorate's contact list, and it is not the Director's office. The Senior Accounts Officer, who holds this award along with the territory's other student welfare scholarships, sits on the first floor of B Block at the Perunthalaivar Kamaraj Centenary Educational Complex, 100 ft Road, Anna Nagar, Puducherry 605 005, on 0413-2207330, at sao-edn@py.gov.in (Contact Us, Directorate of School Education; Students' Welfare Schemes, Directorate of School Education).

Two regional officers are worth having as well, because the 2025-26 sanctions were issued through them: the Chief Educational Officer, Puducherry on 0413-2207280 and the Deputy Director (Women Education) on 0413-2207274, both in the same complex (Contact Us, Directorate of School Education; notice board, Directorate of School Education). The Director of School Education, on 0413-2207202 and at dse-edn@py.gov.in, is the escalation once those desks have been tried (Contact Us, Directorate of School Education).

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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