Boarding House Stipend Scheme (Tripura Govt.)(BHSS(TG))

No opening or closing date is published for this scheme, and none would mean much, because admission to a hostel is what starts the claim. The calendar that does bind sits on the NGO side: the scanned income certificate has to reach the web portal the department will notify, or the concerned Sub-Divisional Welfare Officer, by 30 April every year, and that officer has to certify by 15 May that every income certificate has been verified. A boarding house that does not comply gets no fund released (NGO-run Boarding House Stipend Rules, Directorate of Tribal Welfare).

One other date is a committee calendar rather than a deadline. The Sub-Divisional Level Boarding House Committee is required to meet quarterly to review the admission policy, health, hygiene, discipline and economic performance of the hostels under it, and it is the body that recommends more seats or a new boarding house to the government (The Tripura Boarding House Rules, Directorate of Tribal Welfare).

The distance test is the one that gets misread, because it is not a question of how far the school is. The 1999 rules define the qualifying student as a resident of a place where there is no school providing the required educational facilities within 3 km of the parent's or guardian's temporary or permanent residence, or of the student's own residence where no parent or guardian is living (The Tripura Boarding House (Admission, Regulation and Grant of Stipends to Sch. Tribes and Sch. Castes Students) Rules, Directorate of Tribal Welfare). A village with a primary school next door but no high school puts a Class IX student inside the test.

The rest is permanent residence in Tripura, membership of the Scheduled Tribes, and a place in a government-run hostel or an approved NGO-run boarding house. The 1999 rules were drafted for Scheduled Tribe and Scheduled Caste boarders together, and the Scheduled Caste side has since been administered by its own department rather than by Tribal Welfare (The Tripura Boarding House Rules, Directorate of Tribal Welfare).

Income enters through the NGO route only. The separate rulebook for NGO-run hostels was amended in 2022 to require a family annual income of not more than Rs 2.5 lakh from all sources, proved by an income certificate issued by the Sub-Divisional Magistrate's office (Tripura Grant of Scheduled Tribes Boarding House (Managed by Non-Government Organisation) Stipend Rules, Directorate of Tribal Welfare). No comparable ceiling is published in the rules for government-run boarding houses.

Neither rulebook publishes a list under that heading, so what disqualifies a boarder has to be read out of the rules themselves, and it differs by hostel type.

In a government boarding house the trigger is discipline. An adverse report from the boarding house superintendent, approved by the Sub-Divisional Officer, expels a boarder, and the head of the institution then suspends disbursement to that student (The Tripura Boarding House Rules, Directorate of Tribal Welfare).

The NGO side has three. A family above the Rs 2.5 lakh income line is out, because the managing committee is instructed to admit only students under it. A boarder found guilty of misconduct or subversive activity, or accused of an offence in a criminal case, can have payment suspended by the Sub-Divisional Officer or the District Tribal Welfare Officer. And an organisation that fails to keep the prescribed accounts can have payment suspended for its whole hostel, which stops the money for boarders who did nothing (NGO-run Boarding House Stipend Rules, Directorate of Tribal Welfare).

Nobody reapplies from scratch each year. The two rulebooks part company over a failed year.

In a government boarding house, the stipend is renewed year after year so long as the boarder is promoted to the next higher class and keeps good conduct, and the head of the institution puts a statement of existing boarders before the Boarding House Committee at the start of each academic year with a comment on their fitness for renewal. A student who fails to secure promotion is granted the stipend for one more year in the same class (The Tripura Boarding House Rules, Directorate of Tribal Welfare).

In an NGO-run boarding house the renewal test is satisfactory progress and good conduct, and the failure rule is stricter: a boarder who misses promotion the first time stays eligible, and a boarder who misses it a second time stops being eligible. A fresh income certificate also has to be submitted at the start of every new academic year (NGO-run Boarding House Stipend Rules, Directorate of Tribal Welfare).

The entitlement is for the actual number of days of stay in the boarding house, subject to a maximum of 322 days in the academic year (NGO-run Boarding House Stipend Rules, Directorate of Tribal Welfare). The 322-day ceiling is what the department describes as roughly 10 months of the academic year (Educational Sector, Directorate of Tribal Welfare).

What the daily rate has to buy is not left to the hostel. The department fixes a food menu chart the boarding houses must follow and requires it displayed in the dining hall of both government and NGO-run hostels: 200 grams of rice with 25 grams of dal and 100 grams of seasonal vegetable at lunch, biscuit or cake at 5 PM, and a dinner that rotates through fish curry, egg curry and, on Sunday, 150 grams of meat curry with potato (revised Food Menu Chart for ST Boarding Houses, Directorate of Tribal Welfare). That chart, rather than the rupee figure, is what a parent can check on a visit.

The two official descriptions of what sits inside the daily figure do not match. The department's scheme page counts an LPG subsidy and Re 1 a day for sweeping and cleaning inside it (Educational Sector, Directorate of Tribal Welfare); the memorandum that fixed the figure words it as including Re 1 for LPG subsidy, with upkeep and maintenance of the hostel continuing alongside (Guidelines for Govt. Boarding House Stipend, Directorate of Tribal Welfare). The per-boarder amount is the same either way, so the difference reaches a hostel's accounts rather than a boarder's entitlement.

The department publishes its document list for this scheme under the heading "Document required for NGO run hostel", and that scoping is not incidental (Educational Sector, Directorate of Tribal Welfare). Two procedural points around the list decide more cases than the list itself.

For an NGO-run hostel, the income certificate has to be issued by the office of the Sub-Divisional Magistrate and countersigned by the parent or legal guardian, and it is handed to the head of the institution at the time of admission into the boarding house, not later (NGO-run Boarding House Stipend Rules, Directorate of Tribal Welfare).

For a government boarding house there is no separate stipend form at all. The application for admission into the boarding house and for the stipend is one form, prescribed as Appendix A to the 1999 rules, submitted to the head of the institution and countersigned by the parent or guardian (The Tripura Boarding House Rules, Directorate of Tribal Welfare).

The route is offline and it runs through the school. The head of the institution examines the application and places it with his comments before the Boarding House Committee at institutional level, which a 2003 notification reconstituted as the Sub-Divisional Tribal Welfare Officer in the chair, the head of the institute as member-secretary, the boarding house superintendent, the medical officer in charge of the local health centre or rural hospital, and two teachers. The list of selected students goes to the Sub-Divisional Officer, the Sub-Divisional Level Boarding House Committee formally approves it and intimates the head of the institution, and an approved student is admitted and becomes entitled to the stipend (The Tripura Boarding House Rules, Directorate of Tribal Welfare).

An NGO hostel selects its own boarders. The managing committee or governing body of the school the hostel is attached to makes the selection subject to the Sub-Divisional Officer's approval, and where a boarding house is not attached to any particular institution, its own management selects, again subject to that approval (NGO-run Boarding House Stipend Rules, Directorate of Tribal Welfare).

Tracking has no login screen, but it does have a paper trail with named owners. The hostel superintendent must maintain a register of boarders receiving the Boarding House Stipend from the Tribal Welfare Department; a field officer from the Sub-Divisional Welfare Officer's office checks that register every month, and the Sub-Divisional Welfare Officer cross-checks it annually (NGO-run Boarding House Stipend Rules, Directorate of Tribal Welfare). If a boarder's name is on that register the claim is live; if it is not, the superintendent is the first person to ask. On the money side, the state DBT portal carries this as two separate entries under the Department for Welfare of ST, Boarding House Stipend to ST Students and Boarding House Stipend to ST boarders of Recognised NGO run Boarding House, each with a scheme page showing the year's transfer, beneficiary and transaction totals (scheme list, Tripura State DBT Portal). Those are state aggregates rather than a student-level status: there is no application number to type in.

No entrance test stands between a boarder and a seat, and the rule is not a first-come queue either. The institutional committee makes its selection subject to the seats available in the boarding house and in order of merit, with one preference written over the top of that order: economic condition (The Tripura Boarding House Rules, Directorate of Tribal Welfare). Where seats are short, a poorer household outranks a better marksheet.

The NGO rulebook adds a priority of its own. Students belonging to a Jhumia family from the Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council area get priority for admission into the boarding house (NGO-run Boarding House Stipend Rules, Directorate of Tribal Welfare).

The stipend is attached to a boarder who is present and behaving, and the conditions read accordingly.

Movement is restricted. No boarder may go home except twice a month during the school session without the prior approval of the head of the institution, apart from medical treatment or other compelling circumstances, and the superintendent keeps a register of boarders moving outside the hostel. No outsider is allowed inside the boarding house. The rules also prescribe the boarders' daily routine, from the morning wake-up through compulsory evening study hours, and require it displayed in a prominent place. Food is a common mess with no separate arrangement, and a mess committee of at least five boarders decides the menu (The Tripura Boarding House Rules, Directorate of Tribal Welfare).

An NGO hostel carries conditions of its own before any of this applies. The organisation must be registered under the Societies Registration Act, the hostel must be recognised by the competent authority, and the school its boarders attend must be recognised by the Education Department, the Central Board of Secondary Education or the Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations. The organisation may not collect a fee of any nature from boarders without the Tribal Welfare Department's approval, and it must apply to the Director for permission and for the rate. It must also keep a cash book, a voucher register and a stock register open to inspection or audit (NGO-run Boarding House Stipend Rules, Directorate of Tribal Welfare).

The scheme is administered by the Directorate of Tribal Welfare, Government of Tripura, at Gurkhabasti, P. N. Complex, Agartala, West Tripura, and the Directorate publishes a call centre line on +91-381-2325625 alongside its office numbers (Directorate of Tribal Welfare, Government of Tripura).

For anything about a particular boarder, the useful contacts are closer to the hostel: the head of the institution who holds the application, the boarding house superintendent who keeps the register, and the Sub-Divisional Welfare Officer whose field officer checks it.