Domestic Funding Of Foreign Training(DFFT SCHEME)

Overview

About DFFT SCHEME

Domestic Funding of Foreign Training is not a student scholarship. It is the mechanism by which the Department of Personnel and Training pays, from the Indian budget, to send serving government officers to universities and institutes outside India. Nobody applies to it from a college hostel; applications travel from an officer's desk through a cadre controlling authority. DoPT's own page adds the fact that decides everything else: nominations have not run for years.

What the scheme buys is exposure, and it buys it for people already on the government payroll. The Training Division of DoPT has been running it since 2001-02, nominating officers to universities and institutes abroad to give them sight of international practice in policy and governance and to build competence for the posts they hold and the ones they will hold next, according to the Department of Personnel and Training's scheme page.

Three components sit under the same name, and they behave differently. Long-term programmes run more than six months and up to one year, short-term programmes run up to six months, and a separate Partial Funding of Foreign Study component contributes towards a course the officer has arranged independently, as the DFFT scheme page sets out. The first two are nomination routes: DoPT publishes a list of courses and slots officers into them. The third is a reimbursement-shaped route where the officer does the admissions work.

The status sits on that same DoPT page, and it is what an officer weighing an application should read first. The programmes could not be conducted from 2020-21 onwards because of the restriction imposed on foreign training after the COVID-19 outbreak and on grounds of financial austerity, and that restriction was continued in force until further orders by an Office Memorandum dated 01.04.2021. That note still stands on a page stamped Last Updated: 17 Sep 2025. So what follows describes the rules as the last operating circular left them, not an open call.

Who runs it

Provider

At a glance

Key details

Calendar

Important dates

DFFT does not have a fixed annual date the way an examination does; it has a circular, and the circular sets the calendar for that financial year. The circular is issued every year and is generally released in October of the preceding year for a financial year running April to March, the FAQs state. The last full cycle ran to this timetable.

Partial funding runs on a different clock. Applications can be made through the year but only once admission is secured, the April to June window suits most courses because they begin in August or September, and the cut-off for registering an intention online is 30th April of the year of application, with officers who register by that date given priority even before their admission is confirmed, the partial funding circular sets out. Carry-forward cases from the previous year are funded first if the officer is still eligible.

The break was not purely a pandemic accident. By an Office Memorandum dated 10.01.2020, months before the restriction landed, the Training Division had already told cadre controlling authorities to hold their own draft DFFT policies because the DFFT policy for 2020-21 was undergoing a major overhaul and redesigning around integrated training across the whole of government. That redesign has not been published, no circular has been issued for a subsequent financial year, and there is accordingly no date for an officer to work towards.

Who can apply

Eligibility criteria

Two rings of officers qualify, and the outer ring qualifies only conditionally. All India Administrative Service officers and Group A officers of the Central Secretariat Service, the Central Secretariat Stenographer Service and the State Civil Service are eligible in their own right. Indian Police Service, Indian Forest Service and other Group A Central Civil Service officers become eligible only while they are holding a post on deputation under DoPT's Central Staffing Scheme, per the DFFT frequently asked questions. An IPS officer serving in the home cadre is outside the scheme; the same officer, posted to a Ministry on central deputation, is inside it.

Length of service is the second filter, and it is not uniform. The last published circular fixed these bands as on 1.7.2019.

Age caps the other end. The upper age limit is 48 years for long-term programmes and 52 years for short-term ones, with no age limit for the short courses at Harvard, Chicago, Cambridge, Berkeley and ANZSOG when the applicant sits at Joint Secretary, Additional Secretary or Secretary level, provided at least two years of service remain before superannuation. An officer on central deputation applying for a long-term programme also needs two completed years on the Central Staffing Scheme before the course starts, the circular states.

Partial funding runs on its own test. It is open to all Group A officers of the Government of India who have completed at least nine years of service in the grade and have at least eight years of service left before superannuation, with the residual-service condition relaxed by two years for lady officers, according to the partial funding circular. The course qualifies too, not just the officer: only a master's degree, a PhD or a regular MBA is fundable, and the subject has to bear directly on the officer's work in government, whether the present assignment or a foreseeable future one. An officer who has already been on a long-term foreign training programme has to sit out a cooling-off period of five years before this route opens, and study leave taken in the past is no bar, the same circular records.

Who cannot apply

Exclusions

The myScheme record publishes no exclusion list for this scheme, so the real bars have to be read out of the circular, and there are several that decide more applications than the eligibility bands do.

Repeat participation is throttled by a cooling-off ladder. An officer who has attended a foreign programme of up to one month waits two years; between one and six months, three years; and after a long-term programme the officer is never eligible for another long-term foreign programme, becoming eligible for a short-term one only after five years. An officer who has done a long-term domestic programme such as those at IIM Bangalore, MDI, TERI, the National Defence College or APPPA is barred from long-term foreign training and can take a short-term programme after three years. Job-specific training already taken abroad through a parent Ministry counts towards the same clock, and every cooling-off period runs from the end of the financial year in which the training finished, per the 2019-20 circular.

Conduct closes the door faster than the calendar does. An applicant has to be clear from the vigilance angle, and a long-term nomination requires at least a Very Good grading in the APARs of the past five years. An officer may not apply again for a short-term programme already attended, and officers serving at Additional Secretary or Secretary level in the Central Government may apply only for programmes of one week, the 2019-20 circular lays down. Under partial funding, a pending or contemplated departmental proceeding or a standing adverse APAR entry disqualifies outright, and the assistance can be taken only once in an entire career, per the partial funding circular.

Continuation

Renewal conditions

There is nothing to renew. DFFT sponsors a single course at a time and issues no continuing award that carries into a second year on a progress report. What functions as the renewal question here is the cooling-off ladder described above, which fixes how long an officer waits before a fresh application can even be entertained, and the once-in-a-career limit on the partial funding component.

What you get

Award & benefits

Under the nomination route, the cost sits with the government almost entirely. The entire cost of an officer's participation is met by the Training Division except for certain pre-departure expenses, and air travel in the entitled class is arranged on an excursion fare basis through Air India by DoPT rather than booked by the officer, the DFFT FAQs record. Where an officer wins direct admission to a listed top-ranked university rather than being slotted into a DoPT course, the tuition paid is the lower of the actual fee and the average fee the institution notified for that course over the previous three years, the circular specifies.

Partial funding is capped, published in dollars, and tiered by how the university ranks.

That ceiling is not a cash transfer, and the order in which it is spent matters. Tuition has the first charge, living expenses the second, and only whatever is left goes towards the return air fare, with accommodation and living allowance capped at US $20,000 a year. Any tuition waiver or grant the officer receives from a State government, a multilateral body, a foundation or the university itself is deducted, so the government pays the shortfall or the tier ceiling, whichever is lower. The first year of the course is treated as on duty with no TA or DA payable, and the remainder has to be adjusted against study leave or other leave due, the partial funding circular states.

• Under the scheme, different international training programmes will be offered to eligible government officers as mentioned below:
• Long-Term Foreign Training Programmes (6-12 months)
• Short Term Foreign Training Programmes (up to 6 months)
• Partial Funding of Foreign Study (of more than 6 months)

What to prepare

Documents required

The online application form itself asks for little beyond service particulars, a working email address, a mobile number and a signed undertaking. The clearances attached to it are the real paperwork, and the officer does not produce all of them.

APAR or ACR gradings for the last five years must accompany every application, and the grading entered by the officer has to be vetted by the nodal officer, who separately fills in the vigilance clearance. Officers on central deputation need a no-objection certificate from the Establishment Officer's Division of DoPT, obtained by the nodal officer before the application is forwarded. Applicants for the long-term programmes at the Australian National University and University College London have to produce an IELTS or TOEFL result, and applicants for the Harvard, Chicago, Cambridge, Berkeley and ANZSOG courses must list every official foreign visit made in the previous three years, the 2019-20 circular requires.

A partial funding application carries a heavier file: attested APAR gradings for five years, a certificate that no adverse entry stands, vigilance clearance, the Establishment Officer's clearance where applicable, a statement of purpose explaining how the course serves the officer's present or future work, extracts from the university prospectus establishing the total cost of the programme, and a declaration of every other source of funds already arranged, per the partial funding circular.

Step by step

How to apply

No officer applies to DoPT directly, and this is where most first attempts go wrong. The officer fills the form online; the system routes it automatically to the controlling authority; the nodal officer there validates the entries, completes the forwarding annexure, obtains the competent authority's approval and finalises it online. For officers of Joint Secretary rank and above, the concerned Minister's approval is mandatory before forwarding. Nothing is sent by post, no amendment is possible once the nodal officer has finalised, and an incomplete application is simply not considered, with no reference made back to the forwarding office, the circular says. Cadre controlling authorities are also told to forward only officers who can actually be relieved when the course begins.

A DFFT application is chased on the portal that raised it, and never by writing to the Training Division. The DFFT portal carries a Check Application Status link, and the officer opens it with the DFFT application ID, the password the system issued and a date of birth. Getting to that portal is itself a small obstacle, because the web address the scheme is published under has moved and the paperwork was never reprinted: the dfft.nic.in and partialfunding.nic.in hosts written into both circulars, and still listed as the application link on the scheme's public record, no longer resolve at all. The working addresses are dfft.dopt.gov.in for the nomination routes and partialfunding.dopt.gov.in for partial funding, both hosted by NIC under the department's own domain. The DFFT landing page is still headed for 2019, which is the plainest confirmation available that no fresh round has opened.

How winners are picked

Selection process

Selection is arithmetic first, judgement second. Applying online is mandatory because the system generates a software-based eligibility list and then a merit list from it; a duly constituted Committee then recommends officers for long-term and short-term training against relevance and suitability, and the competent authority approves, the DFFT FAQs explain. There is no written test and no interview at the DoPT end.

The weightage that builds the merit list is not the same for both streams. Short-term shortlisting takes account of an officer's foreign training deficit, seniority, SC or ST status, being a woman, a posting in the North East, Jammu and Kashmir or a Naxal-affected area, physical disability, proximity to the age bar, APAR grading and completion of specified MOOCs. The long-term list drops the training-deficit and age-proximity weights and runs on the rest. For the short courses at Harvard, the five-day Chicago courses and the customised Cambridge, Berkeley and ANZSOG programmes, the circular says selection is on seniority alone.

Partial funding is decided elsewhere and on different grounds. A recommended case travels up through the Additional Secretary or Joint Secretary handling Training, then Services and Vigilance, then the Secretary (Personnel), before going to the Minister of State for approval, and the number of assistances sanctioned depends on budget availability, per the partial funding circular. The Central Establishment Board is the final authority and may apply its own tests of public interest and budget, so meeting every published condition still does not settle the outcome.

One consequence catches officers who assume a nomination is an admission. It is not: the institute abroad runs its own selection procedure and may reject an officer DoPT has nominated, the FAQs note.

Fine print

Terms & conditions

The bond is the term worth reading twice. An officer nominated for a long-term programme has to execute a bond before the course begins undertaking to continue serving the Government for five years after it ends, and the same five-year bond applies to partial funding. An officer who takes partial funding and then fails to complete the programme and obtain the degree has to refund the entire amount of assistance to the Government.

False information in an application is treated severely and separately: the full expenditure incurred on the training is recoverable with penal interest, and action follows under the CCS (CCA) Rules. Withdrawing after nomination triggers debarment of two years for a short-term programme and three years for a long-term one, dropping out on grounds of official exigency with less than three weeks to go carries an automatic one-year debarment, and expenses already incurred by DoPT may be recovered from an officer who withdraws inside that three-week window, the 2019-20 circular provides.

Obligations continue after the officer is back. Feedback is mandatory for both streams, and an officer who does not submit it may be restricted from applying again. Officers returning from long-term courses must submit a case study and a theme paper and undertake to be available as guest faculty for two years at central training institutes, State administrative training institutes and in-service programmes; the arrival allowance for a long-term course is released only against those submissions. Officers on partial funding file a semester-wise undertaking that no other assistance has been received, and must report any that arrives later.

Get help

Contact

The scheme is administered by the Training Division of the Department of Personnel and Training, which heads the DFFT circular from Old JNU Campus, New Delhi 110067 and the partial funding circular from Block-IV of that campus. The second of those signs off with 26168197 as the Director (Training) telephone line.

For anything about a specific application, the first point of contact is not DoPT. It is the nodal officer designated by the officer's own Ministry, Department or State Government, who holds the login for the cadre controlling authority module and can see the application's state; the DFFT portal publishes the combined list of nodal officers and carries a Write to Us form for portal problems.

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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