Food Bill Assistant for Medical & Engineering Students of SEBC(FBAMESSEBC)

Overview

About FBAMESSEBC

Food Bill Assistant for Medical & Engineering Students of SEBC is Gujarat's grant toward the hostel mess bill of a Socially and Educationally Backward Class student reading medicine or engineering. The Director, Developing Castes Welfare pays it under the scheme code BCK-79, and the student applies on the Digital Gujarat portal, where the line is named "BCK-79 Food Bill Assistance For Medical,Engineering Students (SEBC)" (Kheda district scholarship list).

The state's Development Programme for 2026-27 puts the food bill help at Rs 1,500 a month under OBC-2, the post-matric budget head that carries BCK-79 (Development Programme 2026-27, progress statement, March 2026). The directorate pays it for at most ten months of the year, to students whose family income is within six lakh rupees (Mari Yojana scheme list).

It is an old scheme and not a small one. The first order the directorate lists for it is dated 19 January 1993, and its March 2026 progress statement shows Rs 9.0010 crore spent in 2025-26 against an outlay of Rs 9.0000 crore, with an achievement of 6,105 set against a target of 6,000 (proactive disclosure, chapter 4, progress statement, March 2026).

The directorate's own English scheme page is out of date. It still prints Rs. 1000/- a month and a Rs. 4.50 lakh income limit, beside a spending table whose latest year is 2018-19, so a family that reads it first can wrongly rule itself out (scheme page, English).

Who runs it

Provider

At a glance

Key details

Calendar

Important dates

For 2026-27 the directorate opened Digital Gujarat to its students from 6 July to 30 September 2026, and the portal's notice for SC and OBC students gives the same dates (Gujarat State Scholarship Portal, Developing Castes Welfare guidelines). The hosteller certificate cannot be uploaded until the hostel authority has signed and stamped it, so it is the paper to arrange first.

Last year's guidelines also closed the window at the end of September, which is the pattern to expect (Developing Castes Welfare guidelines, previous year). No payment date is published.

Who can apply

Eligibility criteria

Three conditions decide most BCK-79 claims, and on two of them the directorate's own papers say more than the record below.

• Where you live while studying. The directorate's scheme page gives the benefit to students "living in institute affiliated hostels and studying in medical and engineering", and its 2026 scheme booklet asks for a certificate that the student studies while living in a college-attached hostel (scheme page, English, Pragatini Parashishi, OBC booklet 2026).
• Which college. The record frames the scheme around self-financed colleges, but the directorate's rate table says the food bill help is available to students of government, grant-in-aid and self-financed colleges and institutions alike (Developing Castes Welfare guidelines).
• Family income. Plan around the six lakh rupee ceiling in the guidelines and in the state's scheme directory, Mari Yojana, whose entry reads "વાર્ષિક આવક મર્યાદા રૂ. ૬ લાખ છે", an annual income limit of six lakh rupees (Mari Yojana scheme list).

The caste certificate and the parent's income certificate both have to be issued by a competent authority; the guidelines say only such certificates may be uploaded (Developing Castes Welfare guidelines). The guidelines do not list which degrees count as medical or engineering. What they do say is practical: if your course is missing from the portal's course menu, ask your institution to add it from its own login, after which you can select it.

Who cannot apply

Exclusions

Three groups fall outside BCK-79.

• Diploma students. Diploma courses appear in the directorate's rate table only under BCK-80, the instruments grant, while the food bill row lists medical and engineering and nothing else (Developing Castes Welfare guidelines, progress statement, March 2026).
• Students outside a college-attached hostel. Neither the scheme page nor the booklet offers a route for a rented room or a private paying-guest stay (scheme page, English, Pragatini Parashishi, OBC booklet 2026).
• Students from other categories. Nomadic and Denotified Tribe students have their own food bill row, DNT-2, at the same rate and ceiling, and Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe students have separate lines too (Developing Castes Welfare guidelines, Kheda district scholarship list).

Filing under the wrong line is costly. The guidelines warn that a student who applies to another scheme by mistake will not be paid the difference later, and that an application which was never final-submitted, or whose printout never reached the institution with its documents, is not considered (Developing Castes Welfare guidelines).

Continuation

Renewal conditions

The food bill is paid once per academic session, so a hosteller on this scheme claims it again every year, but a student paid under it in 2025-26 does not rebuild the form. Under the 2026-27 guidelines that student's application appears in "Renewal" mode automatically; the student checks what is already on it, attaches the papers the scheme needs, the hostel's signed hosteller certificate among them, and sends it online (Developing Castes Welfare guidelines, Gujarat State Scholarship Portal).

Where a student paid last year finds no Renewal form, the fix is a fresh BCK-79 application under the Director, Developing Castes Welfare heading, filed in the steps under How to Apply.

What you get

Award & benefits

The BCK-79 rate in the directorate's 2026 booklet and in the state's Development Programme for 2026-27 is the same: Rs 1,500 a month, which the booklet limits to ten months of the year (Development Programme 2026-27, Pragatini Parashishi, OBC booklet 2026). Older official pages print less, and the table sets out each version exactly as it appears.

The first two rows are one undated scheme page in two languages, and they are the outdated figures: they disagree with each other on the monthly rate, and both keep the Rs 4.50 lakh ceiling where the dated 2026-27 guidelines print Rs 6 lakh. The last three rows agree: the same monthly rate, and six lakh rupees wherever a ceiling is printed. The myScheme record below carries the current rate as well, next to two lower monthly rates that none of the directorate's documents above mention.

The money goes to the student's bank account. The guidelines ask every applicant to seed Aadhaar with that account, keep its KYC current and confirm it is not dormant, and they put the loss on the student if a wrong account number sends the payment elsewhere (Developing Castes Welfare guidelines).

• Financial Assistance: ₹300/- per month (₹3,000/- annually) towards mess charges for most eligible SEBC students.
• ₹700/- per month (₹7,000/- annually) towards mess charges for selected students (limited number of beneficiaries).
• ₹1,500/- per month (₹15,000/- annually) for SEBC students studying in self-financed medical/engineering colleges and residing in hostels (with a fixed ceiling on the number of beneficiaries).
• Duration: Maximum of 10 months in an academic year.

What to prepare

Documents required

The record lists the basics. Two papers it leaves out are the ones a food bill claim turns on, and both come from the directorate's own material (Developing Castes Welfare guidelines, Pragatini Parashishi, OBC booklet 2026):

• Hosteller certificate. The portal supplies the format on the scheme's "Instruction" page once you are logged in; the hostel authority signs and stamps it, and you upload the scan.
• Food bill receipt. The booklet names the receipt of the food bill among this scheme's required papers, alongside the caste and income certificates and the hostel certificate.

Beyond those, the guidelines' general list applies: all mark sheets from Class 10 on, an affidavit covering any break in study, the parent's income certificate (with a death certificate or divorce order where the father's income cannot be shown), Aadhaar number and a passbook page or cancelled cheque showing the IFSC. Scan the originals for upload and give the institution self-attested copies with the printed form.

Step by step

How to apply

The whole application runs on Digital Gujarat; the guidelines say no scholarship is applied for or paid offline, and a village student can file from an E-gram centre (Developing Castes Welfare guidelines, Kheda district scholarship list).

1. Log in, open Scholarship Services and choose "Request a New Service" for 2026-27, the year the portal has open for OBC students (Gujarat State Scholarship Portal, Developing Castes Welfare guidelines).
2. Under the Director, Developing Castes Welfare heading, pick "BCK-79 Food Bill Assistance For Medical,Engineering Students (SEBC)", not the BCK-80 instruments line listed beside it (Kheda district scholarship list, Developing Castes Welfare guidelines).
3. Fill the form, upload the signed hosteller certificate with the other scans, and final-submit with the OTP sent to your mobile, which moves the form into your institution's login.
4. Print the application and hand it to your institution with the supporting copies.

Checking Where Your Form Stands

After submission, Digital Gujarat's own FAQ says you track the application by logging in and opening "My Applications" (Digital Gujarat FAQ). If a correction is needed and the institution has not yet acted on the form, the guidelines give you a "Withdraw" option to pull it back, fix it and send it again; once the institution has acted, it has to return the form to you (Developing Castes Welfare guidelines).

How winners are picked

Selection process

The published rules set no merit list or test. The application is a documents check that starts in your institution's login, where the college can send it back for corrections, and the directorate's booklet names the district office of the Deputy Director or District Social Welfare Officer (Developing Castes) as the authority the application is made to (Pragatini Parashishi, OBC booklet 2026).

The record speaks of a limited number of beneficiaries. The directorate's year-end statements do set a yearly target for the BCK-79 line, and in each of the last three years the achievement came in above it:

Fine print

Terms & conditions

The rate table in the guidelines is marked as guidance only, with the final reading to follow the government resolution; the directorate lists income-limit resolutions for this scheme dated 9 March 2019 and 2 November 2022 (Developing Castes Welfare guidelines, proactive disclosure, chapter 4).

The same guidelines pay the scholarship once per academic session, following the college's recognised session, and warn that hidden or false information can get a student blacklisted from scholarships.

Get help

Contact

A BCK-79 file that the college cannot settle goes next to the district: the directorate's contact page lists every District Deputy Director and District Social Welfare Officer (Developing Castes) with an address and phone number, and above them sits the head office in Gandhinagar's Dr. Jivraj Mehta Bhavan, at Block No. 4, 3rd Floor, phone +91 79 23253245 (Directorate contact page). The directorate's booklet gives dire-dcw@gujarat.gov.in as its email (Pragatini Parashishi, OBC booklet 2026).

For a form that will not submit or a lost login, the Digital Gujarat help desk is 18002335500 (Gujarat State Scholarship Portal).

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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