Chief Ministergi Shotharabasingi Tengbang (CMST): Scholarship Of Students With Disabilities(CMSTSSWD)

Overview

About CMSTSSWD

Manipur's Economic Survey records 137 students paid under this scholarship in 2023-24, and 81 the year before that. It is one component of a large umbrella, it is settled on paper at a district office rather than on a portal, and the rate a student gets depends on the class they are in. A family planning around it needs two answers above all, when to file and what a college student is actually paid, and Manipur has published neither.

Chief Ministergi Shotharabasingi Tengbang, written as CMST, is not a single scheme. Manipur launched it on 3 December 2017, the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, as an umbrella carrying five sub-schemes for persons with disabilities, their care-givers and older persons without a home, and the state's Economic Survey 2024-25 still reports all five under that one head.

Only one of the five pays a student directly for studying. The other four, as the Churachandpur district administration lists them, are the care-giver allowance, a self-employment loan with subsidy and skill training, free travel and concession on public transport, and a maintenance grant for homeless older persons. Which component you apply under decides the test you have to meet: the care-giver allowance is written for a person whose disability is 80 percent or more, as the state set out at the launch, while the scholarship publishes no such figure at all.

The money is older than the brand. In its report on how it has implemented the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, the Social Welfare Department says it has been paying scholarships to persons with disabilities since long before CMST existed, and that the same support now runs through the umbrella (status of implementation of the RPwD Act, Social Welfare Manipur). The department's older page on welfare for disabled persons still describes that earlier arrangement, a scholarship of Rs 40 to Rs 120 a month with a reader allowance and free Braille textbooks for blind students at the two government special schools (Welfare for Disabled persons, Social Welfare Manipur). The class-wise CMST rates are what the state now reports for this component.

Who runs it

Provider

At a glance

Key details

Calendar

Important dates

Manipur publishes no opening date, no closing date and no annual calendar for the scholarship. Applications are called for when the department has money to move into the head: in December 2020 the Social Welfare Minister announced that funds released that day had gone by direct transfer to care-giver allowance beneficiaries, and that applications for the CMST scholarship and the unemployment allowance were being invited with those amounts to follow (Ukhrul Times, on the release of CMST funds). A family waiting for the next round watches the District Social Welfare Office and the department's own announcements, because there is no deadline to work back from.

Who can apply

Eligibility criteria

The eligibility note printed on the department's own application format runs to three lines: a domicile of the state holding a disability certificate issued by the competent authority, study in Standard I or above, and no similar scholarship from any other source (application format, Social Welfare Department, Manipur).

Nothing in that note fixes a minimum degree of disability, a family income ceiling or an age limit, and nothing else Manipur publishes for this component supplies any of the three.

The missing percentage is the strange one, because the duty the state says this scholarship discharges is written around a threshold. Manipur's own report on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 names this scholarship as its action on the provision requiring scholarships for students with benchmark disability (status of implementation of the RPwD Act, Social Welfare Manipur). Benchmark disability is a defined threshold: the central schemes built on the same Act are open only to students with 40 percent or more disability as the Act defines it (Scheme of Scholarships for Students with Disabilities, Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities). Manipur asks for the certificate and prints no percentage against it, so a student whose certificate falls below the central threshold is not shut out by anything the state has written down.

The form still collects the assessment. It asks for the type and degree of disability, and it asks for a family income figure certified by the competent authority, both recorded on the file without a published bar to clear.

Who cannot apply

Exclusions

No separate exclusion list is published for this component, and the one bar that operates is put to the applicant as a question on the form: whether any other scholarship has been availed from any other source, answered yes or no above the signature. Answering yes for a similar scheme takes the student outside the eligibility note.

Read against the central guidelines, which say a scholarship holder under those schemes will not avail any other scholarship or stipend and that payment stops from the date another one is accepted (Scheme of Scholarships for Students with Disabilities, Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities), CMST is a choice against a central disability scholarship rather than a top-up on one.

Continuation

Renewal conditions

Nothing published sets out a renewal route, a continuation form, or any distinction between a fresh claim and a returning one. The rates run by the year, and the closest the format comes to a tenure is a line asking a school student for the period applied for. A student at Class XI or above fills in something different, a row naming the last examination, the year of passing, the subject offered, the institution and the board or university, so a second year of study reads as a second complete file rather than an update to the first (application format, Social Welfare Department, Manipur).

What you get

Award & benefits

The rate is fixed by the stage the student is at, not by marks and not by need.

The Economic Survey carries the same band, Rs 3000 to Rs 8000, and puts the component's real size on the record: 107 students in 2021-22, 81 in 2022-23 and 137 in 2023-24, against spending of Rs 0.0515 crore, Rs 0.075346 crore and Rs 0.0704 crore across those three years. The survey's table heads that band as a monthly rate, where the launch announcement and the scheme's own published answers both state it per annum, so the column heading is the outlier and not the amount.

The graduation rate is the figure a college student has to pin down first. The rates announced at the launch put graduate and above at the top of the class-wise ladder, while the scheme's own published answer for a student pursuing graduation is lower, and the stated maximum for the scheme matches the ladder rather than that answer. Whatever the district sanctions is what reaches the bank account, so ask the District Social Welfare Officer which slab attaches to the course before treating either figure as fixed.

What to prepare

Documents required

The department's format and the myScheme record publish enclosure lists that differ by exactly one document. Both ask for the certificate, the photographs, the reading certificate, the passbook and the identity document; the record adds the passing certificate or marksheet of the latest qualification, which the format's own list never names. Packing that one as well costs a photocopy.

The disability certificate is what the claim rests on, and it has to be the one issued by the competent authority. A Unique Disability ID card is not the gate here: the Manipur form has a field for it marked "if available", where the central schemes make a UDID number or UDID enrolment a general condition of eligibility (Scheme of Scholarships for Students with Disabilities, Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities).

The bank details are the entry most often got wrong, because the account the form asks for is not necessarily the student's: it takes the father's, mother's, guardian's or care-taker's account, with the branch, the IFSC code and the account holder's relationship to the applicant written in, and the department's note beside it makes having the account mandatory before the form is filled (application format, Social Welfare Department, Manipur).

Step by step

How to apply

Offline from start to finish: no login, no portal, no upload.

1. Download the format from the Social Welfare Department's downloads page, where it sits in the list of application forms, or collect a printed copy from a District Social Welfare Office. The departmental web address printed on the form itself, socialwelfaremanipur.nic.in, no longer resolves, so the live site is the one to use.
2. Fill it legibly and attach the certificate, the photographs, the reading certificate, the passbook copy and the identity document. Open the bank account first if there is none, because the department's note on the form makes an account mandatory.
3. Lodge the file at the office of the District Social Welfare Officer concerned, whom the application format names as the addressee. The Directorate is not the filing point.

Following a submitted file has no portal behind it, so it runs on three paper handles. The foot of the format is an acknowledgement card that the receiving office fills in with a receipt number and a date, and that slip is the proof the papers were lodged. The department then publishes the names of the selected beneficiaries on its website or on the notice board of the Directorate and the District Social Welfare Offices, which is where an applicant learns the outcome. The award itself is a direct transfer into the beneficiary's bank account, so the passbook entry is the record that the money moved.

How winners are picked

Selection process

Nothing published says how one eligible file is preferred over another. The department applies the eligibility test against whatever money the component has been given, and the contrast with the central route is stark: there, selection is ranked on the percentage of disability recorded on the certificate, the older candidate wins a tie, and the slots are fixed in advance and distributed state-wise (Scheme of Scholarships for Students with Disabilities, Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities).

No slot count is published for the state component either. The scale shows up instead in the payment counts, between 81 and 137 students in each of the three years the Economic Survey reports. Publication of the selected list is the one stage of the process an applicant can watch from outside.

Fine print

Terms & conditions

The applicant signs a declaration that every statement is true, correct and complete, and accepts that the application is liable to be cancelled if any information is found false or incorrect at any stage, or if the eligibility criteria are not satisfied. The same declaration undertakes to abide by the terms and conditions the department lays down (application format, Social Welfare Department, Manipur).

Beyond that undertaking, no recovery rate, penalty clause or appeal route is published for the component. A rejected or stalled file has no scheme-specific channel behind it either: what the department offers is the general grievance and suggestion form carried on every page of its website, which is a slower road than a visit to the district office that holds the paper.

Get help

Contact

The file, and any question about one already lodged, goes to the District Social Welfare Officer for the student's own district, whom the department's contact listing places at the district headquarters. Above that office the same listing puts Disabled Welfare with the Assistant Development Commissioner (WP) at the Directorate Office, and gives the department's Directorate Complex at AT Line (2nd MR Gate), Imphal. That listing runs to three columns, the division, the officer's designation and the office address, and it stops there, so the counter is the only route it opens.

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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References

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