Dr. S. Radhakrishnan UGC Post-Doctoral Fellowship(DSRUPDF)

Overview

About DSRUPDF

Each fellowship page in UGC's student-scheme section ends on the same field, a one-line remark, and that line is where the Commission says what is actually happening with the scheme. On the Junior Research Fellowship page the remark is the National Testing Agency's address. On the Savitribai Jyotirao Phule Fellowship page it is the address of UGC's own fellowship portal. On the Dr. S. Radhakrishnan UGC Post-Doctoral Fellowship page it reads, in full, "Only Old cases are being settled", and it still read that in September 2026. That is the answer most people arrive here needing, and it belongs before the numbers rather than after them.

This is a post-doctoral fellowship for a researcher who has finished a Ph.D., holds no job, and has a mentor willing to take them, and it was designed to run for three years with no extension at the end of them. UGC paid Rs 50,000 a month and a contingency grant of Rs 50,000 a year, and it opened the scheme across sciences, engineering and technology, humanities and social sciences including languages, per its scheme page.

The breadth is the point of it. UGC's Selection and Awards-II bureau keeps two lists, one headed Old Schemes and one headed New Schemes, and the older list carries a separate post-doctoral fellowship for humanities and social sciences, one for women and one for SC and ST candidates. The 2022 fellowship sits on the new list and covers every one of those grounds in a single scheme, according to the bureau's page. The same bureau's brief describes its work as settlement of cases under all old schemes and selection and disbursement for the new ones, which is what makes the remark on the scheme page unusual: the newest fellowship on that list is being read as a settlement file too.

Who runs it

Provider

At a glance

Key details

Calendar

Important dates

Those two dates have not moved since. The portal was still showing the same start and end dates for this fellowship when it was archived in April 2025, and in September 2026 UGC's scheme page still described the work on the scheme as settling old cases. No second window has been announced, so there is no notified date to wait for and no shortlist pending against one.

Who can apply

Eligibility criteria

Employment status decided this scheme more often than academic record did. Only an unemployed candidate could apply, anyone already in regular service was barred outright, and the age ceiling was below 35 on the last date of application, with five years of relaxation for SC, ST, OBC non-creamy layer, women, PWD and transgender applicants, under the UGC guidelines for the fellowship. The two tests reinforced each other: contract teaching after the Ph.D. counted against the applicant on employment and spent the years they had left under the age line.

Two of the conditions sat on other people. The mentor had to be regular faculty at Associate Professor level or above, hold a Ph.D., and have supervised at least 3 Ph.D. theses already. The host was the harder of the two to satisfy. Reputation counted for nothing here: the guidelines name a closed list of four institution types, and a research centre outside that list was ineligible whatever the proposal said, again per the guidelines. Two of those four types carry a live NAAC condition, so a willing supervisor at a college whose parent university had let its accreditation lapse could not host the work at all.

The marks test read only one degree. General-category applicants needed 55% at postgraduate level, with 5% of relaxation for the reserved categories, and nothing in the 2022 rules looked at the undergraduate marksheet at all, per the eligibility clause. The older Radhakrishnan fellowship had read two, asking a general-category applicant for 55% at graduation as well as 60% at postgraduate level, per its XII Plan guidelines. Dropping the undergraduate test mattered to anyone whose graduation marks were never going to argue for them.

Who cannot apply

Exclusions

Nothing is printed under exclusions in the public scheme record, which reads as though there were none. The guidelines are where the bars live, and there are several. Anyone who had already availed any kind of post-doctoral fellowship from UGC was told not to apply. A selected candidate holding another fellowship or remuneration had to resign it before accepting this one. An applicant who had been declared unsuccessful could come back only after one year had passed from the declaration of that result, and only with a new research proposal. Applications with unformatted documents or false or misleading information were to be summarily rejected, per the guidelines.

Two further bars operate after the award rather than before it. A fellow found employed during the post-doctoral research loses the fellowship, and so does a fellow drawing any other fellowship or scholarship from another source during the tenure.

Continuation

Renewal conditions

No renewal application exists under this scheme. What exists is a yearly test the fellow can fail: a progress report on the research, signed by the mentor and the head of department, filed with the nodal officer or designated cell the host institution maintains for fellowships. Where UGC finds that progress unsatisfactory it may terminate the fellowship, and its decision on that is final.

After the third year there is no test left to take. The tenure carries no provision for extension, the fellow ceases to be a UGC fellow with immediate effect on that date, and the guidelines describe any claim or reference made afterwards as illegal, under the same guidelines. A researcher whose work runs past the third year finances the tail of it somewhere else.

What you get

Award & benefits

The clearest way to see what UGC changed in 2022 is to set the fellowship beside the older Radhakrishnan scheme it replaced.

The graduated scale went, and a single flat rate took its place. A fellow in year three of the 2022 scheme drew the same amount as a fellow in month one, which is generous at the start and static at the end.

• The slots will be allocated as per Govt. of India reservation policy. However, 30% of slots will be reserved for women candidates.
• Nature of Assistance: Fellowship @ ₹ 50,000/- p.m.
• Contingency @ ₹ 50,000/- p.a.
• Escorts/Reader Assistance @ ₹ 3000/-p.m.(fixed) in cases of PWD (Person with disability)
• Norms for Utilizing Contingency Grant: The Contingency grant may be utilized for minor equipment useful for research such as laboratory equipment or laptop costing less than ₹ 50,000/-, chemicals, and other research-specific items within the ceiling of ₹ 1,00,000 p.a. with the approval of the host university/institution. The items purchased from the contingency grant are assets of the university/institution and at the end of the fellowship are to be handed over to the host university/institution. The contingency grant cannot be used for international travel or the purchase of furniture.
• Hostel accommodation may be provided to the scholars by their institutions. In such cases, the scholar is eligible to draw only hostel fees excluding mess, electricity, water charges, etc. If the scholar makes his/her own arrangements for accommodation, he/she shall be entitled to draw HRA as per the ceiling and categorization of cities by the Govt. of India. In case, the scholar wishes to draw HRA, he/she is required to submit a certificate, in the prescribed format, to his institution.
• No separate/fixed medical assistance is provided. However, the scholars may avail the medical facilities available in their Institutions concerned.
• (i) Earned Leave for a maximum period of 30 days in a year in addition to public holidays may be taken by a scholar. However, they are not entitled to any other vacation, such as summer, winter, and pooja vacations, etc.
• (ii) Maternity/paternity leave as per the Govt. of India norms issued from time to time shall be available for scholars at full rates of the fellowship once during the tenure of the fellowship.
• (iii) An ‘Intermittent Break’ for a maximum total period of 1 year shall be permissible to the women scholars. The break can be availed a maximum of 3 times during the entire period of the fellowship. However, the total duration of the break shall not exceed one year. No fellowship shall be available for the period of such break(s). This period of intermittent breaks shall not be counted towards the tenure of the fellowship, and thus effectively the total period of fellowship shall remain the same.
• (iv) ‘Academic leave’ shall be permissible only for one year throughout the tenure for any kind of academic/teaching assignment/foreign visit in connection with research work. However, during the period of academic leave no fellowship, contingency, etc will be paid by the UGC. The period of academic leave will be counted towards the tenure. Expenditure on foreign visits in connection to research work cannot be claimed from UGC.
• (v) All kinds of leave shall be availed by the scholar only with due approval of the institution concerned.

What to prepare

Documents required

The document that most often decides an application here is the No Objection Certificate from the proposed research centre, because it needs three signatures rather than one: the mentor or supervisor, the head of department, and the registrar or director of the university or institute. All three had to be on the certificate before it was uploaded, per the guidelines. Collecting a registrar's signature is an administrative errand with its own queue, and it is the part of the file that cannot be produced on the last evening.

The portal's own instructions added rules that are easy to read past. Registration on the fellowship portal was a one-time process; the Registration ID it generated was sent to the registered email address and that address would not be changed later; and once the application form was submitted it could not be modified, with no queries entertained on the point. No hard copy of any application form was to be accepted at any stage, according to UGC's general instructions for the round.

Step by step

How to apply

There is no application to make. UGC's scheme page carries no live portal address, and no fresh round has been advertised since the one described below.

That round ran entirely online. A candidate registered once on UGC's fellowship and research grant portal, filled the form, uploaded the research proposal, the abstract, the No Objection Certificate and the signed auto-generated form, and submitted before the last date, with no offline route and no hard copies accepted at any stage.

The portal recorded its own closing, and the record is worth reading because it is the only place the shutdown is visible. A capture taken while the window was open carries Login and New User controls at the head of the page. One taken nine days after the close date has replaced them with a single line, "Registration is Closed Now." The last capture that answered, in April 2025, still shows the fellowship's card with its 2022 start and end dates and still offers no way to register.

Tracking a live application came down to two handles and no more: the Registration ID the portal generated, which was sent to the address used at registration, and that address itself, which UGC said would not be changed later. Results went up on the UGC website rather than out by mail, selected candidates downloaded their own award letter from there, and the guidelines call the exercise paperless and say no interim queries would be entertained, per the guidelines and UGC's general instructions for the round.

Payment runs on a different portal from the application, which is the part that matters while old cases are still being settled. The fellowship is not disbursed through the fellowship portal at all: the host institution links the fellow's ID on the UGC Canara Bank scholarship payment portal, the one UGC's own site now lists under the label "Web portal for Fellowship/Scholarship Legacy Cases" on the scheme page, and uploads each month's claim there. That is the machinery a pending Radhakrishnan file sits inside, and the fellow has no login to it. What the fellow holds is one piece of paper, the monthly confirmation certificate handed to the institution; the deadline that decides whether anything moves belongs to the institution, which has to have the claim on the portal by the 15th, per the guidelines. The credit itself arrives through PFMS, and responsibility for the genuineness of a claim rests with the institution rather than the fellow, so a settlement that has stopped moving is a registrar's office question before it is a UGC one.

For someone already holding the fellowship, the route for anything that needs UGC's decision runs through the host institution, not directly. Extension of the joining period, a change of mentor or workplace, and resignation are all applied for through the nodal officer or designated cell the university or institute maintains for fellowships, and UGC takes the final call on each, per the guidelines.

How winners are picked

Selection process

No interview was held. Three referees at a minimum read each proposal, chosen by UGC for the research area the applicant had proposed, and the merit list was built out of the scores they sent back. What those referees weighed was set out in advance: the candidate's accomplishment at the Ph.D. level, the professional standing of the mentor, and the institution where the post-doctoral research was to be carried out. UGC described the whole exercise as akin to manuscript handling and evaluation at leading international journals, and reserved the right to withdraw or cancel an award without assigning any reason, under the guidelines.

That is a change from how the older Radhakrishnan fellowship was decided. There, online applications went to a screening committee and shortlisted candidates were called before an expert committee constituted by the Commission, with no travel allowance paid for attending, per the XII Plan guidelines. The 2022 design put the decision entirely in the hands of subject referees reading a proposal.

Fine print

Terms & conditions

Time is the binding condition. A selected candidate had to join or activate the fellowship within 3 months of the date of the award letter or it was treated as cancelled, and that could be stretched to a maximum of 6 months only in special circumstances with the competent authority's approval; the tenure then counted from the actual date of joining, not from the letter.

A few other clauses matter more than they look. The research place may be transferred once during the tenure and once only, on no-objection certificates from both institutions issued by the registrar or director. Academic leave of up to one year is allowed for a teaching assignment or a research-related visit abroad, but no fellowship or contingency is paid during it and the period still counts towards the three years, so the leave costs a fellow both money and tenure. Termination follows misconduct, plagiarism or unethical practice in any form, or a fellow being found ineligible at any point, though the scholar must first be given a reasonable opportunity to defend themselves, per the guidelines.

Get help

Contact

The desk that holds this file is Selection and Awards-II, and its brief is set out in two lines: settlement of cases under all old schemes, and selection and disbursement of all cases for the new ones. UGC asks that questions about the schemes SA-II deals with go to selectionaward504@gmail.com, and names the bureau head as a Deputy Secretary on 011-23604731, per the bureau page. A settlement query quoting the 2022 Registration ID and addressed to that bureau has somewhere specific to land.

Nothing on the scheme page is scheme-specific in this respect. The postal address at Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg, the 011-23604446 switchboard and contact.ugc@nic.in printed under it are the Commission's shared channels, used by every UGC scheme at once, so anything sent there has to be routed internally before it reaches the file.

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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