Deen Dayal SPARSH Yojana (Scholarship For Promotion Of Aptitude & Research In Stamps As A Hobby)(DDSY)

Overview

About DDSY

Deen Dayal SPARSH Yojana is a competition, not a means-tested grant. The Department of Posts started it on 3 November 2017, and the eligibility conditions it publishes ask for a class, a recent marksheet and a link to stamp collecting, with no income ceiling among them (Department of Posts notice, Tamil Nadu Circle). What trips people up here is administrative rather than academic: nothing here runs on a single national calendar, and the office that decides your child's application is the postal division down the road.

The scheme sits with the Department of Posts but is run circle by circle, so the notification, the closing date and the office that receives the form are all set locally: a Goa applicant posts to the Sr. Superintendent of Post Offices, Goa Division at Tapal Bhavan in Panaji (PIB Panaji, Goa), while a Gujarat applicant posts to whichever divisional office that circle's own notice names (Deen Dayal SPARSH Yojana 2025-26, Gujarat Circle). Each circle runs its own notification, its own written quiz and its own evaluation, and offers up to 40 awards, taken 10 at a time from each of Classes VI, VII, VIII and IX (Postmaster General, North Gujarat Region).

The child it actually fits is a middle-school student in a recognised school who already collects stamps, or who can be signed up to a school philately club before the circle's form closes. Marks alone will not carry an application, and neither will an enthusiastic collection with a poor report card. Both have to be in place on the day the circle looks at the file.

Who runs it

Provider

At a glance

Key details

Calendar

Important dates

The scheme has no fixed national calendar, and there is no single last date to write in a diary. Each circle fixes its own closing date and announces the Level 1 quiz behind it, and the cycles the circles have published show the spread.

A missed date is worth checking before it is written off. Karnataka Circle has posted separate notices extending the timelines of the scheme in more than one cycle (Karnataka Postal Circle), though an extension is a poor thing to plan around.

Who can apply

Eligibility criteria

The condition families read past is the philately one. The applicant's school is expected to run a philately club with the child as a member, and where the school has no club, a Philately Deposit Account in the child's own name is accepted instead. That account is opened at a post office for Rs 200 (Postmaster General, North Gujarat Region), which makes the philately requirement the cheapest part of the whole exercise and the easiest one to leave until the form is already in hand.

The academic bar is 60% or the equivalent grade in the most recent final examination, with a 5% relaxation for SC and ST candidates, and it is applied at the time of selection rather than at the time of applying (Department of Posts notice, Tamil Nadu Circle). Karnataka Circle named the session it meant when it opened the 2025 round: 60% in academic year 2024-25 (PIB Bengaluru, Karnataka Circle).

One inconsistency is worth knowing before you argue with a post office counter. Circle notices have described the scheme in one line as being for Class VI to XI while their own eligibility clause, in the same document, says Class VI to IX (Department of Posts notice, Tamil Nadu Circle). The eligibility clause is the one the divisional office applies.

Who cannot apply

Exclusions

No exclusion list is published for this scheme, and nothing in it shuts out a student by category, state or family income. Every way an entry can die therefore traces back to a published condition rather than a hidden bar: no philately club membership and no Philately Deposit Account, marks under the bar, a class outside the VI to IX range, or a form that reaches the divisional office after the date in that circle's notification.

Continuation

Renewal conditions

A SPARSH selection is made for one year at a time, and the Department of Posts publishes no continuation route for last year's awardee. A child who won in one cycle applies again the next by sitting the philately quiz over, on the same form and against the same marks condition as a first-time applicant, and no published rule gives a past awardee a shortlisting preference.

What you get

Award & benefits

The money is modest and predictable, and it is paid into a joint account the child holds with a parent at India Post Payments Bank or the Post Office Savings Bank, so the banking side has to be sorted out before any instalment can land.

The non-cash part is easy to overlook. Every school that enters the competition is assigned a philately mentor drawn from among established philatelists, who helps it form a school philately club and guides its students through their project work.

• Amount of Scholarship
• The amount of the Scholarship is to be ₹ 6,000/- per annum @ ₹ 500/- per month.
• IPPB/POSB will ensure that the scholarship is paid to awardees on a quarterly basis (Rs. 1500/- each quarter) after getting the list from each Circle.
• Selections to the scholarship would be for one year.
• An already selected student can apply for the scholarship next year provided he/she fulfils other criteria.
• Every prospective school which participates in the competition would be assigned a Philately Mentor to be chosen from amongst the renowned Philatelist.
• The Philately Mentor would help in the formation of the School level Philately Club, providing guidance to young and aspiring Philatelists on how to pursue the hobby and also helping the aspiring Philatelists with their Philately Projects etc.

What to prepare

Documents required

The scheme's headline document list stops at a marksheet, a bonafide certificate and the philately club or account details; the circle's own application form runs longer, and it is the form that decides whether an entry can be completed at all. The circle application form wants the student's name, the mother's name and the father's name in both English and Hindi, a passport photograph attested by the school head or in-charge, the school's name in both scripts, the percentage scored in the last final examination with the session written next to it, the Philately Deposit Account number along with the date the account was opened, and the school philately club membership number (Deen Dayal SPARSH Yojana application form, West Bengal Circle).

Two of those fields decide whether the form can be filled at all. The account-opened date and the membership number cannot be produced on the last evening, so the philately paperwork should be started the week the notification appears, not the week it closes.

Step by step

How to apply

Applying is entirely offline. There is no portal for this scheme, no National Scholarship Portal login and no online status page, and a search that lands on an application link for some other scholarship is a good sign you are on the wrong scheme.

1. Watch your own postal circle's website for the year's notification, the application form and the annexure listing divisional addresses; the earliest of these notices in recent cycles went out in July (PIB Bhubaneswar, Odisha Circle).
2. Fill the form, get the photograph attested by the school, and enter the philately club membership number or the Philately Deposit Account details.
3. Send it by registered post or speed post, or hand it in, to the Senior Superintendent or Superintendent of Post Offices of the postal division named in the notification, so that it arrives on or before the stated date (Deen Dayal SPARSH Yojana 2025-26, Gujarat Circle).

How to Track the Application and the Payment

Because the form travels by post, the consignment number on the speed post or registered post receipt is the only proof of delivery you will get, and it can be followed through the track and trace box on the India Post home page. Keep that receipt until the results are out.

After that, the circle website is the noticeboard. Karnataka Circle, for one, publishes the year's notification and application form, the annexure of divisions, the philately project guidelines, the result under the scheme and any extension of the timelines on its own site (Karnataka Postal Circle). Check the circle that received your form rather than a national page.

Payment status has no separate tracker. Once a child is selected, the circle passes the list of awardees to India Post Payments Bank or the Post Office Savings Bank, and each instalment shows up in that joint account, so the passbook or the account statement is the payment record.

How winners are picked

Selection process

Selection runs in two levels, and the first one is a written test rather than a merit list read off marksheets.

Level 1 is a philately written quiz held at regional or divisional level: a multiple-choice paper of 50 questions drawn from current affairs, history, science, sports, culture, geography, personalities and philately, both local and national. Level 2 is a project on philately, restricted to 4 to 5 pages, no more than 16 stamps and no more than 500 words, with detailed guidelines and a sample template issued to the shortlisted candidates after the quiz (Department of Posts notice, Tamil Nadu Circle).

The list of topics a project may be built on comes with the circle's notification, and a committee of postal officials and renowned philatelists at circle level evaluates what is submitted. The tightest constraint is the word limit, well under the length of a school essay, so the stamps have to carry most of the argument.

Fine print

Terms & conditions

The award is tied to the year it is won, and the conditions attached to it are practical rather than legal. The awardee has to hold a joint account with a parent at India Post Payments Bank or the Post Office Savings Bank, because the instalments are released against the list of accounts the circle sends across. The 60% test is applied at the time of selection and against the most recent final examination (Department of Posts notice, Tamil Nadu Circle), so the marksheet that decides the award is not necessarily the one that went in with the form. The project stays inside the page, stamp and word limits the notification sets, and it goes in only after the quiz result names the candidate.

Get help

Contact

The binding contact for this scheme is not a national helpline but the Senior Superintendent or Superintendent of Post Offices of your own postal division, whose address appears in the annexure of divisions that each circle publishes with its notification (Karnataka Postal Circle). The Department of Posts page for SPARSH and philately carries the scheme's own description and the link to its full guidelines document. Where a circle issues a press note, it usually carries a regional office number for queries, as the Gujarat Circle notice does (Deen Dayal SPARSH Yojana 2025-26, Gujarat Circle).

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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