Financial Assistance to OBC Students Appearing in the Mains Examination of UPSC(FAOSAMEU)

Overview

About FAOSAMEU

An OBC candidate of Assam who gets past the UPSC preliminary stage can claim up to Rs 50,000 towards the mains attempt that follows. The claim turns on a certificate and a result, it is filed on myScheme, and the figure is a limit the Directorate may pay up to rather than a sum it has promised. Two documents hold nearly everything a claimant needs: the Directorate's scheme page and the advertisement each round runs on.

The Directorate of Welfare of Scheduled Castes and Backward Classes, Assam, puts the purpose in a single line, to provide financial grants to OBC students for appearing in UPSC Mains. Everything unusual about the scheme follows from how narrow that purpose is. It attaches to an examination stage rather than to a course, so the conditions never ask where the applicant studies, and the qualifying event is a result the state does not itself issue.

The state has been paying on this line at some scale. The Governor of Assam told the Budget Session of the Assam Legislative Assembly that during 2023-24 and 2024-25, more than 3,100 candidates from Other Backward Classes who cleared the APSC and UPSC prelims received financial support to appear in the mains examination. Read that count before borrowing it: it takes in candidates who came through the Assam Public Service Commission, and an APSC pass opens no door here, so the figure describes the state's whole OBC effort on civil services aspirants and not this scheme's own intake.

Where the round stands is a dated question. The newest one the Directorate has advertised is for the 2025-26 academic year, and the scheme page behind it carries a last-updated stamp of July 03, 2025. Nothing for a later academic year has been advertised since. The entry is still carried in the What's New panel of the Directorate's home page, where the link runs straight to the myScheme form, so the scheme is live but between windows.

Who runs it

Provider

At a glance

Key details

Calendar

Important dates

The 2025-26 round gave this scheme the same window as the four beside it. Applications opened on 4th July 2025 and were advertised to close on 31st August 2025. The scheme page had been refreshed the day before the opening, on July 03, 2025.

The advertised close did not hold. An extension notice against that same advertisement now sits in the Quick Access panel of the Directorate's home page, so the last date a candidate reads on an aggregator or a social media post from that round is not necessarily the last date that applied.

For the round after it, there is nothing yet. No advertisement for a later academic year has been issued, the scheme's entry on the Directorate's front page still points at the same myScheme form, and the stamp on the scheme page has not moved since July 2025. An aspirant waiting on the next window is watching that front page rather than a published calendar.

Who can apply

Eligibility criteria

Community, a result and a household income figure are the whole of it. The applicant must belong to the OBC community of Assam; must have qualified the recent UPSC Preliminary Examination; and the parents' annual income should not exceed Rs 5.0 lakhs. Nothing further is asked, on the scheme page or in the notice.

The word doing quiet work is "recent". It fixes the claim to a current cycle rather than to any preliminary pass a candidate has ever held, and it is the only limit of time the Directorate writes down anywhere.

Two conditions a candidate might brace for are simply absent. The three merit incentives on the same notice each open by requiring the applicant to be currently enrolled as a student, and each then sets a minimum of 80% marks in the board examination. Neither line is repeated for this scheme. A graduate who left college years ago and has been preparing full time since answers every condition it does set, and no marksheet appears anywhere in the file.

Who cannot apply

Exclusions

What ends a claim has to be assembled from two places, because the Directorate never gathers it into one: the three eligibility conditions, and the instructions printed at the foot of the advertisement.

Three groups fall outside on the eligibility alone. A candidate who cleared only the Assam Public Service Commission preliminary examination cannot claim, because the qualifying condition names the UPSC Preliminary Examination and no other paper. A household above the income bar is out whatever result sits behind the application. And an OBC certificate issued without the sub-caste written into it is not the certificate this scheme names.

Paper is refused outright. The Directorate keeps the whole claim inside the portal and will not entertain an offline application whatever the circumstances, so a file handed in at a counter is not a late application, it is no application. The instruction that catches this scheme in particular is the one on legibility: the sheet an OBC aspirant is least likely to hold a clean scan of is the preliminary admit card, and the claim cannot be evidenced without it.

Continuation

Renewal conditions

Nothing in this scheme runs from one year into the next, so renewal is not a stage that exists. A claim stands or falls on the single preliminary result it was filed against, and no continuation form, undertaking or annual re-verification is published for a beneficiary to complete afterwards.

The open question belongs to the repeat aspirant. A candidate who was paid in one cycle, did not get through the mains and qualified the prelims again later will find nothing from this Directorate that either bars or allows a second claim. Previous assistance is not mentioned on the scheme page or in the advertisement at all, which leaves the helpdesk as the only place to settle the point, and settling it before filing is cheaper than discovering it afterwards.

What you get

Award & benefits

Read the money as a limit. The scheme page says an amount upto Rs. 50,000/- will be provided under this scheme to each beneficiary, subject to budget provision, and nothing else the Directorate has published turns that into a sum a selected candidate is owed. No slab, no per-head formula and no instalment plan appears on the scheme page or in the advertisement, so a claimant planning around this grant should plan around the possibility of receiving less than the headline.

The grant is also unattached to any head of expenditure. Nothing published limits it to examination fees, travel to a centre or study material, and no utilisation statement is asked for, so a beneficiary is not accounting afterwards for how the money went.

Where it lands is settled by one upload. The scheme page asks for a self-attested front page of the passbook, and that is the account the credit is made against, so a passbook belonging to an account the candidate has stopped operating is the wrong one to upload. No disbursement timetable is published anywhere, and neither document says how long a selected candidate waits once the round has closed.

• An amount of up to ₹50,000/- will be provided to each beneficiary, subject to budget provision.

What to prepare

Documents required

Seven items are named, and they answer three questions: who the applicant is, what they cleared, and what the household earns.

Two rows repay a second look. The income certificate has exactly one named issuer, the Circle Officer, so a certificate obtained from any other authority does not answer what is asked. And the examination is evidenced twice rather than once, by the admit card and separately by proof of qualifying, which is why a candidate who saved the result but let the admit card go has to retrieve it before the form will be complete.

Step by step

How to apply

Applications are taken on myScheme and nowhere else. A DigiLocker account has to exist before any of it can begin, because myScheme issues no credentials of its own and signs the applicant in on the DigiLocker mobile number and PIN. Once inside, the scheme's own form opens for the mandatory fields and the uploads, and a completed submission is acknowledged on screen with a Form Submitted Successfully message and nothing further.

Which link is opened matters more here than any search. The advertisement lists the five schemes with a direct address against each, and this one sits at myscheme.gov.in/schemes/faosameu, immediately above the Scheduled Caste version of the same assistance. A candidate who opens the neighbouring address is completing a form their certificate does not fit.

Afterwards there is no page to watch. Neither the scheme page nor the advertisement publishes an application tracker or a payment lookup, and the published procedure ends at that confirmation message without handing the applicant a reference number of any kind. The helpdesk on the notice is what remains, and a caller who has the date of submission and the preliminary admit card in front of them will get further than one working from memory.

How winners are picked

Selection process

There is nothing to be ranked in. None of the three conditions produces a score, no merit list is published, and no scrutiny or selection committee is named for this scheme in anything the Directorate has issued. The scheme page describes the decision as resting on whether the applicant satisfies the eligibility criteria and on the documents submitted, which makes it a verification exercise rather than a competition.

What no document explains is how the Directorate fixes each award beneath the ceiling. Whether a short year cuts the number of candidates paid, the amount each of them receives, or both, is not written down anywhere a candidate can read it.

Fine print

Terms & conditions

Two clauses in the scheme's own text decide what a claimant is owed, and neither favours them. Assistance is not a matter of right to any OBC applicant, and it is extended depending on the applicant satisfying the eligibility criteria and the documents submitted. The amount printed above that clause is capped subject to budget provision, which places the size of the payment inside the state's finances rather than inside the applicant's file.

The appeal position is settled in one line: the decision of the Directorate shall be final and binding. No review, no representation route and no grievance channel specific to this scheme is published beside it, and because accuracy is placed on the applicant, an error noticed after submission has no published stage at which it can be put right.

Get help

Contact

One helpdesk answers for every scheme on the advertisement, two of which differ only in the community named, so a query needs to identify itself as the OBC UPSC mains scheme or it will be answered against the wrong file. The notice prints an email, assamdirectorateofwelfareofsc@gmail.com, alongside a mobile number, 8638922415.

Anything sent in writing should carry the memo the round runs under, SCBC/15/2025-GEN-DWSCBC, stamped at the head of every page of the advertisement, and go to the Directorate at Sarumotoria, Dispur, Guwahati-781006. The scheme page publishes no officer, telephone number or address of its own.

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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