Awarding Teleeducation Scholarships To Afghan Students(ATESTAS)

Overview

About ATESTAS

An Indian ministry funds this scheme, an Indian autonomous body awards it, and Indian universities teach it, but an Indian passport disqualifies you from it. The Awarding Teleeducation Scholarships To Afghan Students scheme is open only to nationals of Afghanistan, and the eligibility rule that decides everything else is the one on nationality. What the scheme does is unusual enough to be worth reading even if you cannot apply: the Ministry of External Affairs pays an Indian university directly so that a student who never leaves home can hold a UGC-recognised Indian degree.

The Ministry of External Affairs launched the e-VidyaBharati (e-VB) Network Project in October 2019, and the Afghan track of it is administered by the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, which aims to offer 1,000 scholarships a year to Afghan students on online undergraduate and postgraduate programmes at participating Indian universities (e-VB guidelines for Afghan students, AY 2026-27). The money is Indian and the recipients are not: no part of the annual pool is set aside for students of any other nationality, India's own included.

"Tele-education" here does not mean a short certificate or a recorded lecture series. It means the full degree, delivered online by universities that the University Grants Commission has separately approved to award degrees in online mode, or by Institutes of Eminence. The teaching follows the UGC four-quadrant format, so a student gets recorded tutorials, e-content, curated web resources and self-assessment built from assignments, solutions and a discussion forum, and the end-semester examinations are conducted remotely by the university using the Safe Exam Browser proctoring technology. English is the medium at every empanelled university.

For the July 2026 session, Appendix A of the guidelines lists 9 Indian universities and 59 programmes (e-VB guidelines for Afghan students, AY 2026-27): Alagappa University, Andhra University, Anna University, Guru Jambheshwar University of Science and Technology, IGNOU, Jamia Millia Islamia, Kurukshetra University, Mahatma Gandhi University and Mizoram University. The subject spread is commerce, business administration, computer applications, arts, mass communication and social work, and each university sets its own minimum and maximum duration for a course.

The online route is not the original shape of India's Afghan scholarship commitment. The Afghanistan portal records that 500 scholarships a year, later increased to 1,000, were introduced for Afghan nationals to study undergraduate, postgraduate and PhD courses at Indian universities in person, and that from AY 2023-24 onwards the 1,000 annual scholarships have been offered for online UG and PG courses through the e-VB portal instead (iLearn Afghanistan portal). The scheme is still running: ICCR invited applications for AY 2026-27 (ICCR enrolment notice, AY 2026-27), and the same portal records the enrolment window for Afghan students under the Special Scholarship Scheme for Afghan Nationals as closed on 27 July 2026 (iLearn Afghanistan portal). Beyond those enrolment notices, no ministry statement about the scheme's longer-term status has been published, so anything past the next announced session is not something the official record supports.

Who runs it

Provider

At a glance

Key details

Calendar

Important dates

The guidelines deliberately do not fix a deadline. They say the last date for submitting a completed application will be published on the iLearn portal, and advise applicants to follow the project's social media handles for it. That is why the dates arrive as an ICCR enrolment notice each year rather than as a standing calendar.

That window was under two weeks long, which is the practical argument for having documents scanned and sized before a notice appears. The number of intakes has also changed: an earlier version of the same guidelines document described enrolment as carried out twice a year, in January and July sessions, while the AY 2026-27 version describes it as carried out every year for the July session. One annual intake is the current position. The other date that matters is 1 July of the academic year, the reference date for the age band.

Who can apply

Eligibility criteria

Nationality is the gate. Scholarships under e-VB are open to nationals of Afghanistan holding a valid Afghan National ID or passport. An Indian passport holder cannot get past the nationality field on the iLearn registration form, which the guidelines require to read national of Afghanistan, and e-VB has no waiver, quota or second category that admits an Indian national.

Two details in the eligibility test catch applicants out. The age band of 18 to 35 years is measured as on 1 July of the particular academic year, not on the day you submit the form, so a birthday between the two dates can move you in or out of the band (e-VB guidelines for Afghan students, AY 2026-27). And the academic qualification is not set by ICCR at all: each empanelled university defines the minimum qualification for its own programme, which is why the guidelines tell applicants to read the eligibility rules on the university portal before choosing a course.

There is a live ambiguity on residence worth knowing about. The eligibility clause says an applicant may be residing in any part of the world provided the Afghan National ID or passport is valid, while the registration instructions in the same AY 2026-27 document tell the applicant to enter Afghanistan as the country of residence and describe the applicants as participating from Afghanistan. The binding answer for a given session sits with the ICCR Afghan section, not with a summary of the document.

Who cannot apply

Exclusions

Nothing appears under exclusions on the myScheme record, so the disqualifiers have to be read out of the e-VB guidelines, where they sit inside the application-form instructions rather than in a list of their own. Only one application per candidate is allowed, and an applicant must declare to the university that they are not enrolled in any other ongoing e-VB programme. Someone who has already finished a degree under the project is treated differently from someone still studying on it: a completed degree lets you apply afresh through the iLearn portal for another one.

Two more things end an application. Admission is restricted strictly to the universities and programmes listed in Appendix A, so an application to a course outside that list goes nowhere. And an application that is incomplete or ineligible in any respect is liable to be rejected, which is why the guidelines press applicants to fill every detail rather than leave a field to be sorted out later. The harsher clause sits apart from that one: where information, a certificate or a declaration turns out to be false or is furnished to hide a material fact, the guidelines provide for the scholarship to be withdrawn forthwith, for no further correspondence on the matter, and for legal action against the applicant.

Continuation

Renewal conditions

Nothing is renewed by reapplying. The scholarship continues semester by semester, and each release has a condition attached to it. The first semester's amount goes to the university upfront. The second semester's release depends on the university confirming that the student is active and has submitted at least a minimum number of assignments. From the third semester onwards a stated performance rule applies: scholarships for odd and even semesters are approved only if the student has passed all previous odd and even semesters respectively, and where that condition is not met the scholarship is deferred until it is.

The clock is the other constraint. Students are expected to finish within three years for an undergraduate programme and two years for a postgraduate one, with any relaxation given strictly as per UGC rules.

What you get

Award & benefits

No money reaches the student. The Ministry releases the admissible amount each semester to its implementation agency, which remits it directly to the Indian university where the student is enrolled, against invoices raised by that university.

ICCR states the same limit in its own enrolment notice: the scholarship consists of the tuition or other course fee payable to the university or institute, and no stipend or any other dues are payable (ICCR enrolment notice, AY 2026-27). A student who passes receives the degree online, and physical copies of degrees and certificates are sent to the Indian Mission in Kabul for collection.

• The scholarship amount covers the entire degree programme fee including: Other charges like registration fee, re-examination, and award of degree, etc.
• Note: The passed students are awarded Degree online and physical copies of degrees/certificates are also sent to Indian Mission in Kabul, and students need to collect from Indian Mission in Kabul.

What to prepare

Documents required

The uploads themselves are ordinary. The conditions attached to them are where applications fail.

The National ID has to carry a photograph and date of birth and must stay valid until the last date of enrolment, so an ID expiring mid-session is a problem before the course starts, not after. Scanned files are accepted only as .jpeg, .jpg or .png and only between 50 KB and 250 KB (e-VB guidelines for Afghan students, AY 2026-27), which is small enough that a phone photograph of a transcript usually has to be compressed before it will upload. Anything issued in a local language needs a certified English translation uploaded alongside it. And the paperwork does not stop at the upload: the guidelines warn that the Indian Mission in Kabul may ask to see the originals.

Step by step

How to apply

Applying happens on two different websites, and confusing them is the most common practical error. Registration is on the iLearn portal at ilearn.gov.in, where you enter your name exactly as it appears on the National ID issued by the Government of Afghanistan, plus an active mobile number and email. Those fields are then prefilled on the university form, so a mismatch introduced at registration follows the application all the way through. For AY 2026-27, ICCR directed Afghan applicants to the Afghanistan-specific portal at afghan.ilearn.gov.in.

The second step is on the university's own site. After registering you select a university and programme on iLearn and are redirected to that university's portal, which is integrated with iLearn, and the actual application form and document uploads happen there. The form must be filled in English. Choose the subject carefully against what you studied at higher secondary level, because the guidelines name careless subject choice as a cause of rejection by universities.

Tracking is the part applicants ask about most and the part with the least to offer. No public application-status dashboard is published for this scheme. What the guidelines describe instead is a notification: once approvals are complete, the university informs the student of the final selection and enrols them, and the student then gives the university consent to accept the scholarship. Until that message arrives, the routes for a status query are support@ilearn.gov.in and afghsection.iccr@nic.in. On fees, the portal carries a standing disclaimer that the programme fee is paid as scholarship by the Government of India and that nobody has a mandate to charge a learner any fee, which is the line to hold against anyone offering paid help with the form.

How winners are picked

Selection process

Four bodies see an application before any award exists, and the university is only the first of them.

The iLearn portal describes the same outcome from the other end: the award goes to applicants who are recommended by Indian universities and Indian Missions abroad and approved by MEA. Submitting a form is therefore not a claim on a seat. The guidelines say plainly that merely applying secures neither a scholarship nor admission at any institution.

Fine print

Terms & conditions

All decisions of ICCR and MEA on awarding a scholarship are final and binding, and ICCR reserves the right to change the scholarship policy and its financial terms whenever MEA decides to, with the change passed down to universities and students, who are bound by it. The current guidelines document also supersedes the provisions issued for previous academic sessions, so an older PDF saved from an earlier year is not the rule in force. That matters more than it sounds, because three files all titled Guidelines for Awarding Tele-education Scholarships to Afghan Students are live at once across the two iLearn domains, and their Appendix A lists do not agree. The AY 2026-27 file lists 59 programmes (e-VB guidelines for Afghan students, AY 2026-27); the older file still linked from the scheme page on ilearn.gov.in lists 48 (e-VB guidelines for Afghan students), and a second older file on the same domain lists 67 (e-VB Afghan guidelines). Both older files also still describe enrolment as running twice a year, so read the session a file names before trusting its course list.

One obligation survives the course. Before the final degree is awarded, a student is expected to fill the alumni form on the iLearn portal and on the India Alumni portal, which is how Indian Missions abroad stay in contact with e-VB graduates.

Get help

Contact

Queries about the project go to support@ilearn.gov.in and afghsection.iccr@nic.in, the two addresses the AY 2026-27 guidelines list (e-VB guidelines for Afghan students, AY 2026-27). The two older guideline files publish one address each and not the pair: the file the ilearn.gov.in scheme page links gives only afghsection.iccr@nic.in (e-VB guidelines for Afghan students), and the other older file on that domain gives only support@ilearn.gov.in (e-VB Afghan guidelines), so an address copied out of an older file reaches a real desk but only one of the two. The Indian Mission in Kabul is the physical point of contact in two situations named in the guidelines: it may ask an applicant to produce original documents, and it holds the printed degrees and certificates for graduates to collect.

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.

Explore more

Related scholarships

References

Sources