Educational Assistance To Children Of Prisoners (Pursuing Professional Course)(EACP(PPC))

Overview

About EACP(PPC)

Kerala's Social Justice Department runs two education schemes for children of prisoners, and the Suneethi portal lists them one after the other inside its Social Defence group of 8 services. One pays a monthly allowance to a child at any stage of school or college. This one pays a single, much larger sum, and only to a student who already holds a merit seat in a degree-level professional course in a government or aided college inside Kerala. The department's published norms also carry a custody test that the national scheme listing leaves out.

The service is a fee-and-hostel grant rather than a maintenance allowance. The state fixed the assistance at Rs 100,000 per student, inclusive of annual fees and hostel fees, and it did so under G.O (Rt) No. 322/2014/SJD dated 08-05-2014.

Two things follow from that design. The grant is sized to a fee bill, so the application cannot move until the college has put its fee figures in writing. And because the sum is large, the department kept the gate narrow: the norms published on the Suneethi portal confine it to degree-level professional courses in government and aided institutions inside the state, and to students admitted on merit.

How many families get through is a fair question, and Kerala answers it in public. The state's e-services dashboard carries a row for this exact service, district by district and cumulative since 01-04-2022, and the row is short. Ernakulam has taken 4 applications and approved 2, more than any other district; Thiruvananthapuram has taken 2 and approved 1; seven districts show no application at all. Read the disposal column carefully, because it counts a file as disposed once it is closed either way: Kozhikode and Kottayam both read 100% on applications the same row records as rejected or returned. This is a small scheme with a narrow gate, and the paperwork matters far more than the queue.

Who runs it

Provider

At a glance

Key details

Calendar

Important dates

A window for filing has never been notified for the professional-course grant. The college year sets the timing instead: the certificate fixing the annual fee and the hostel fee is what dates the application, so the realistic window is the stretch after admission when the college office will issue it. The Jail Superintendent's certificate is the other half, and since the application is submitted through that office it is the one to start on first.

Who can apply

Eligibility criteria

The conditions have to hold together, and the one that catches applicants out is not the marks rule.

The parent must be serving a life sentence or be under sentence of death, and the Suneethi norms add that the convicted parent must already have been in jail for at least 2 years. That second half is absent from the national listing of the scheme, so a family reading only the summary can file too early and be turned back. The household has to be on the BPL list, and the student has to have secured 70% or above at higher secondary level.

No rupee income ceiling is published for this service. The BPL listing is the whole means test, which is why the ration card sits at the top of the document list. That card is doing a second job as well, showing that the student is the convicted parent's child, and it is that second job a Village Officer's declaration takes over when the child's name is not on it.

The last condition is about the seat rather than the student. Admission has to have come through government merit. A management or self-financing seat in the same college, held by the same student with the same marks, falls outside the scheme.

Where both parents have been convicted and the child is being raised by a relative above the poverty line, the ration card stops being the deciding paper. The application is considered on the Probation Officer's inquiry report instead.

Who cannot apply

Exclusions

The scheme record publishes no exclusion list of its own, but one real bar sits in a neighbouring file. The department's norms for its education scheme for children of victims of crime refuse that assistance to a child already drawing educational assistance from the Social Justice Department for children of prisoners, and the bar is written without separating the monthly scheme from this one, so a student sanctioned here should not count on that one as well. The same clause rules out a child drawing the Social Security Mission's Snehapoorvam support or sponsorship under the Integrated Child Protection Scheme.

Beyond that, the exclusions are the eligibility rules read backwards: a seat in an unaided college, a self-financing seat in an aided one, a college outside Kerala, or a parent serving a fixed term rather than a life or death sentence.

Continuation

Renewal conditions

The published norms set out no renewal rule for this service. The only sign that a sanctioned student is expected to come back is in the document list, which asks for the previous year's certificate alongside the current year's college certificate. That is a weaker footing than the department gives its victims-of-crime education scheme, where the norms say in terms that assistance may continue in later years once the head of the institution certifies that the child is still studying. A student partway through a four-year or five-year professional course should ask the District Probation Office what the sanction actually covers rather than assume the next year follows.

What you get

Award & benefits

The grant is Rs 100,000 per student, and the annual fee and the hostel fee both sit inside that figure rather than on top of it.

The paperwork is built around the college rather than the student. The norms require the college's own bank account number and its IFSC with the application, and no account belonging to the student or the guardian appears in the list at all. Where the department credits the money it does not say, which is a real gap for a family planning a year of fees; it is explicit only about its monthly assistance for children of prisoners, which the same norms page says is paid directly into the beneficiary's bank account.

More than one child of a single family may be assisted, so there is no one-per-household cap to work around.

• Under the scheme, State Government is providing assistance amount of ₹100,000/- (per student) to the children of prisoners for pursuing degree-level professional courses in Government / Aided colleges.
• Note 01: The assistance amount also includes annual fees & hostel fees.
• Note 02: The assistance will be given to more than one child belonging to a single family.

What to prepare

Documents required

Two documents decide most files, and both come from someone other than the applicant.

The first is the Jail Superintendent's certificate. It is the only document that proves the sentence and the time served, so a family that cannot obtain it has nothing to put in its place. The second is the college certificate, and it has to do more than a bonafide letter: it must carry the annual fee, the hostel fee, the college's bank account number and IFSC, and proof that the student was admitted to a merit seat. Asking the college office for it early in the academic year is sensible, because it has to be issued in that shape before the application is complete and no other office can issue it.

One gap catches families often. If the child's name is not on the convicted parent's ration card, the Village Officer's declaration that the applicant is that person's son or daughter has to be produced in its place.

Step by step

How to apply

Applications are filed online through Suneethi, the Social Justice Department's citizen service platform, which is also the state's listed website for this service. An account has to be created before the form opens, and the sign-in after it asks for the mobile number, a password and a captcha. The department also publishes a printed application form for families filing on paper.

The route matters more than the channel. The department's page for this scheme says in one line that applications have to be submitted through Jail Superintendents, and the agency named against this scheme is the District Probation Office. The two are not alternatives: an online submission the Superintendent's office knows nothing about is missing the step the department names first.

Tracking it afterwards is not a portal lookup. Suneethi publishes no status page for a filed application: the account it was submitted from is what the applicant has, and the portal's own published answer on timing covers delivery rather than decision, promising only that an approved service is provided inside the Right to Service time limit (Suneethi portal). The one public view of where files stand is the e-services dashboard row, and it is district-level and cumulative, not per-application. For anything narrower, the District Probation Office holds the file and the Jail Superintendent's office is worth the second call, since the application reaches the department through it.

How winners are picked

Selection process

The department publishes one ranking rule and no more. Where applicants are more numerous, the norms give preference on the percentage of marks secured, which makes the 70% bar a floor and not a finish line.

Where the child of two convicted parents is being raised by an above-poverty-line relative, the Probation Officer's inquiry report is the deciding document rather than a supporting one. No published rule converts marks into an amount, and no merit list for the scheme is published.

Fine print

Terms & conditions

The conditions attached to the grant are the ones already in the norms rather than a separate undertaking. The assistance is tied to a government or aided professional course inside Kerala; for MBBS and B.VSc only a government college is considered; admission has to be on merit; the household has to be on the BPL list. More than one child of a family may be assisted, and a child drawing this grant is barred from the department's education scheme for children of victims of crime.

Get help

Contact

Start with the probation side of the department: the District Probation Office named against this scheme is what implements it, and it is the office that can say where a file has stopped. Above it sits the Director, Social Justice Department, Vikas Bhavan, PMG, Thiruvananthapuram 695033, whose published portal contact is +91 471 2306040, Monday to Saturday between 10am and 5pm, and swdkerala@gmail.com. Portal trouble belongs to that number; a rejected or returned application belongs to the Probation Office that handled it.

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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