Educational Assistance (A.B.O.C.W.W.B)(EA(ABOCWWB))

Overview

About EA(ABOCWWB)

Four different names point at this one benefit. The Assam Building and Other Construction Workers' Welfare Board files it as One Time Educational Assistance; the Commissionerate of Labour lists it as Educational Assistance under rule 285; the paper you actually fill is headed Application for Educational Scholarship; and Assamese families searching for it type labour card scholarship. Underneath all four is a single slab table that pays by the class the child is reading in, and a paper route that has not moved online.

The Assam Rules spend one sentence on this benefit and an entire form. Rule 285 of the Building and Other Construction Workers (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Assam Rules, 2007, headed Financial assistance for education, names no rate, no ceiling and no closing date at all. It leaves those to the Board and pins down only the paper: an application in Form No. XLIII, lodged with whatever documents and inside whatever window the Board lays down, per the Rules published by the board.

What the statute does fix is worth more to a family than a rate would be. Form No. XLIII is printed in the Rules with a parent's affidavit and a certificate for the head of the institution built into it as pages of the same document, so the shape of a claim is settled by law even where the money is not, and a counter cannot add a step that is not on the form.

The gap between the two documents is easy to measure on a neighbouring benefit. Rule 281 of the same Assam Rules sets death benefit at Rs 15,000, or Rs 50,000 where the death is an accident in the course of employment, while the Board's current table pays Rs 50,000 and Rs 3,00,000 for those two cases on its benefits page. The 2007 figures are the floor the Board started from, not what a district office works to today, and the same is true of every term the Rules left to the Board.

Who runs it

Provider

At a glance

Key details

Calendar

Important dates

No statewide last date exists for this benefit. Rule 285 leaves the filing window to be specified by the Board, and the Board has published no calendar for it, so the timing is set by your own academic session: the admission slip and the reading certificate both have to speak to the session the claim is made for.

Three dated markers do bear on a file being prepared now. The Nirman Sakhi portal became operational on 9th January 2025 and the new BOCW identity card became mandatory for benefit claims from 15th May 2025, both in the same circular. The form itself carries a last updated date of February 27, 2024 on the Commissionerate's forms page, so a photocopy taken from an older printed copy is worth replacing before filing.

Who can apply

Eligibility criteria

The applicant is the child. Form No. XLIII is filled in the student's name and signed at the foot by the student, and the head office format that districts must submit records the applicant's relationship to the registered worker as son or daughter, per the board's own circular annexure and the form printed with the Rules.

Every test that can actually fail, though, sits on the parent's side, and the printed form turns each one into a field. It asks for the parent's registration number and date, the parent's identity card number and date, whether father and mother are both registered beneficiaries of the Welfare Board, the dates of the first and the last contribution, the number of subscriptions and the total amount paid, on the Commissionerate's Application for Educational Scholarship. A family that cannot fill that block cannot file, whatever the child's marks look like.

One bar has nothing to do with construction. Rule 269 opens membership of this fund only to a building worker who is not a member of any other welfare fund established under any law in force, so a household already carried on a different statutory welfare board cannot hold both memberships and claim here on the second one.

There is a live divergence on timing, and it is worth understanding rather than working around. Rule 289 of the Assam Rules carries a sub-rule saying every financial benefit other than death benefit and medical assistance for accidents becomes payable only after one year of a person becoming a member of the fund. The Board's current table does not read that way, and it is not vague about it either: it marks maternity assistance as available after 3 years of registration, marriage assistance after 5 years, and educational assistance immediately after registration. Since rule 285 left the terms of this benefit to the Board to determine, the Board's published table is what a Registering Officer applies, and the officer holding your parent's file is where to confirm it before you plan a date around the answer.

On how many children a family can claim for, the silence is deliberate rather than accidental. The same list caps maternity assistance at a maximum of 2 children of a woman beneficiary and marriage assistance at up to 2 children, and prints no equivalent words against educational assistance.

Who cannot apply

Exclusions

The scheme publishes no exclusion list. What does the excluding is the contribution record, and the form is built to surface it rather than to let it pass.

Rule 270 of the Assam Rules puts the beneficiary's contribution at Rs 20 per month, remitted in advance once in three months into a bank the Board has specified for the district where the member lives. A continuous year of non-payment ends the membership under that same rule, and buying it back costs the arrears plus a fine of Rs 2 per month, at a door the Rules let a family open twice and no more. Item 10 of the printed form then asks the student to declare whether the membership has been ceased and, if so, the period of revival, so a broken year is written on the application in the family's own hand.

The Board's registration criteria add one more. A worker registering with it should not be a beneficiary of any other welfare scheme, as the board's FAQ puts it, which is the practical face of rule 269 of the Assam Rules at the counter.

Continuation

Renewal conditions

There is no renewal application for the assistance itself. It is claimed against a class, for a session, on a fresh form. What has to stay live is the parent's standing with the Board, and the claim documents are where that is inspected: the Board asks for the beneficiary identity card copy with renewal and the latest updated monthly contribution copy alongside the education claim, per the benefits page.

Two portal rules set the rhythm of that upkeep. An identity card generated on the Nirman Sakhi portal for a new registration or a renewal is valid for two years from the date of issuance and has to be renewed every two years, although a card issued on onboarding instead runs to the validity of the old card it replaces. Contribution can be paid for a minimum of 3 months and a maximum of 24 months at a time, so a family can buy itself a clear stretch of eligibility in one visit. Both are answered on the board's FAQ.

What you get

Award & benefits

Those are not notional rates. The district sanctioned list Sivasagar published for 2024-25 credits each student against one reading class at exactly these figures, a Class X student at 4000.00, a Class VI student at 2750.00, a Class XI student at 7000.00 and a Class IV student at 1500.00, in the district list.

The last row is the only one that carries a condition instead of a figure. The Board undertakes to bear the entire expense for higher study in a government institution of IIT, engineering or medical beyond the postgraduate degree, on submission of proper documents from the institution, so the institution's paperwork rather than the student's application is what opens it.

There is one wording conflict a family should raise before counting on a second year. The Board's list heads this benefit One Time Educational Assistance, while the Commissionerate of Labour, publishing the identical slabs under rule 285, prints the Class 11 to 12 row as each year including ITI on its scheme page. Two arms of the same department, two readings. The district labour office is where to settle which one your file will be treated under.

• Educational Assistance under the scheme is as follows:-
• Sl. No.ClassAmount of Annual Grant/Scholarship1Class 1 to 4₹1,500/-2Class 5 to 7₹2,750/-3Class 8 to 10₹4,000/-4Class 11 to 12 (each year) including ITI₹7,000/-5Degree Course & its equivalent courses including ITI₹10,000/-6Post Graduate or equivalent classes including engineering/ medical/competitive exam₹20,000/-7Apart from the Post Graduate Degree, if any children of the registered beneficiaries wish to get higher study in the Government Institution of IIT /Engineering /Medical or any higher study in the Govt. InstitutionAll Expenses

What to prepare

Documents required

The operative list is printed on the last page of the form itself, and the Board's own claim column repeats most of it. Rather than set it out twice, here is what the awkward items are actually for.

The certificate from the head of the institution is asked for twice over on the same application. The form carries a certificate block the head of the institution signs on the paper, declaring the student is in a named year of a named course, that the head has examined the application and is convinced it is correct, and naming the university or board the institution is affiliated to; an attested copy of a separate certificate stating that the student is studying in the institution is then listed as a document to enclose, along with an attested copy of the pass certificate and of the marksheet, in the Application for Educational Scholarship.

The affidavit by the parent is the one step that can be finished neither at home nor at the labour office. It is a page of the form on which the parent affirms the child's course and year, the month and year of their own registration with the Board and their identity card number, undertakes to remit the scholarship back if any of it proves wrong, and accepts recovery of any default due. It is then to be signed before an MLA, an MP, a Panchayat President or a Gazetted Officer, who certifies on the same page that the signature was made in their presence, in the form printed with the Rules.

Two smaller items are explained by fields rather than by the list. The form asks whether the student is SC, ST, OBC or general, which is what puts a caste certificate on the enclosure list for everyone outside the general category. And it asks for the branch and account number of the applicant's bank where the money is to be deposited, which the head office format then re-records as the account holder name exactly as it stands in the active bank passbook, with bank, branch, account number and IFSC, per the circular annexure. The Commissionerate separately publishes a consolidated note titled List of documents to be submitted alongwith application for various benefits on its forms page, which is the version district staff hand across the counter.

Step by step

How to apply

Begin with the printed form, not the portal. The Commissionerate hosts the Application form for Educational Scholarship on its forms and applications page for construction workers, last updated on February 27, 2024, and the scan is headed with the board's name above the Form XLIII heading and the rule 285 citation, which settles that the paper in circulation is the statutory form prescribed by the Assam Rules. It sits on the Commissionerate's forms page.

The completed form goes to the labour office your parent's registration sits under. Assistant Labour Commissioners, Labour Officers and Labour Inspectors act as the Board's Registering Officers, and the Board publishes their offices with addresses and pin codes on its contact page.

One attachment has been compulsory since the middle of 2025. The Labour Commissioner directed all Registering Officers that with effect from 15th May 2025 a copy of the new BOCW identity card generated through the Nirman Sakhi portal is mandatory for availing any benefit under the Board, exempting only funeral, death and family pension claims, in a circular that also records the portal as operational from 9th January 2025 and requires every existing registered worker to onboard there before applying for benefits. Since the form has a field for the parent's identity card number, a family still holding only the old card has an onboarding step to finish before the education claim can be written at all.

Do not expect to file the claim itself online yet. Asked directly whether benefits can be applied for on the portal, the Board answers that the existing manual process applies for any benefit and that the claim and disbursement module is still being developed, on its FAQ; the E-services column against this benefit on the benefits page says Launching Soon.

Following the Claim After You Hand It In

There is no claim status lookup, and it is better to know that than to keep refreshing one. The Track Application box on the portal's home page is printed with the format ABOCW/123/2024/REG/00000008, a registration reference, and the Board's FAQ points the acknowledgement number at a registration application's status. Neither follows an education claim moving on paper between a district office and head office.

What is published instead is the outcome, district by district. The Board files sanctioned educational assistance under its disbursed benefits section, year by year, with the year 2025 and earlier years each carrying their own district lists, and the Commissionerate posted its own set for Educational Assistance (2024) on January 04, 2025, covering districts from Dhemaji and Goalpara to Sivasagar, Dibrugarh and Kamrup, on its department page. Finding your child's name on the district list for the year is the confirmation the portal cannot give you.

Between filing and that list there is an internal handover worth knowing about when a file goes quiet. Registering Officers were instructed that after dispatching the physical application forms for disbursement to head office they must also send the benefit details as soft copies in Excel, in the head office's prescribed tabular format, to an address created specifically for benefits correspondence, per the board circular. A file can therefore be complete at the district and still be waiting on that second, electronic half.

How winners are picked

Selection process

Nothing here is decided on marks. The form collects the qualifying examination and the percentage scored, yet the Board sets no pass mark, no ranking and no district quota against this benefit on its benefits page, so nothing published ranks one eligible child above another; what limits a sanction is the fund, not a merit order. What a claim has to survive instead is two certifications of the district's list.

The first is at the district. A Scrutiny Committee verifies and certifies the list of applications before it is forwarded, and that certification is a real gate rather than a signature: the Deputy Labour Commissioner, acting as the Board's Deputy Chief Executive Officer, has sent a district list back to a Registering Officer because it did not follow the tabular format issued by head office and because a field needed to calculate the amount payable had been left out of it, in the same circular file.

The second is at head office, where applications are placed on an annexure headed List of Applications for One Time Educational Assistance to be placed before the Screening Committee for finalization and approval. Its columns are the whole examination: the student's name and date of birth, the registered worker's name, registration number and date, the institution, the reading class or course being pursued, and the bank details. The reading class column is the one that carries the money, because it is what selects the slab, which is why an application that leaves it ambiguous comes back to the district instead of forward to a sanction.

Fine print

Terms & conditions

Every provision on the Board's list, this one included, is expressed as a power to sanction subject to the availability of Cess fund, per the benefits page. A correct application therefore establishes a claim to be considered and sanctioned in turn, not a right to a payment on a fixed date.

Two undertakings travel with the form and both are enforceable against the family rather than the office. The student signs that the facts furnished are true to their knowledge and belief and promises, if selected, to abide by the conditions stipulated in the scheme of financial assistance for education. The parent's affidavit adds the money side: if any of the stated facts is later found wrong, the scholarship amount granted to the student is to be remitted back by the parent, and the parent agrees to recovery of any default due.

The last condition is the bank account, and the Board publishes what happens when it is wrong. The Sivasagar sanctioned list for 2024-25 ends with an annexure of failed cases whose recorded reason for failure is that the account does not exist, printed with the applicant's name and the registered beneficiary's registration number, in the district list. Cases that come back are then filed district-wise under a year-wise Benefits Returned section of the Board's site.

Get help

Contact

The Board gives its address as Gopinath Nagar, Guwahati-780016 and publishes abocww.board@assam.gov.in for the office and its helpdesk alike, on its contact page; its letterhead places the office more precisely, on the third floor of the Transit Night Shelter, in the circular mandating the new identity card. The toll free helpdesk is 1800-345-3574, answered between 8:00 AM and 8:00 PM.

For anything about a specific file, though, the office to deal with is the district one your parent is registered under, because that is where the form is received, where the Scrutiny Committee list is drawn up and where a returned case lands. The Board's contact page lists those offices with street addresses, from the Assistant Labour Commissioner at Silchar to the Labour Inspector at Diyung Valley. The Commissionerate of Labour, which prints and hosts the form, can be written to at labour.commissioner@assam.gov.in.

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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