Free Passport Scheme(FPS)

No application window frames this scheme: the myScheme record carries neither an open nor a close date, and the Haryana passport portals notify no deadline for the passport application or the reimbursement claim. The calendar that matters is your own: eligibility lasts only while you are a final-year student, and issuance alone takes 25 to 30 days in the normal mode, per the department's page. Applying early in the final year leaves room for police verification and the reimbursement claim before the course, and with it the eligible status, ends.

The published conditions are short, but each one cuts deeper than it reads. Haryana domicile keeps the benefit inside the state's own population, whatever college a family may have picked. Final-year status means the claim window is the last stretch of the course and nothing earlier, so a second-year student who wants a passport now simply pays for it like anyone else. Enrolment in a government college is the sharpest filter of the three, and the myScheme record draws it bluntly: a student of a private college has no claim, however well the other two conditions fit. The full criteria, as the department worded them, render below.

The condition people miss is the quietest one: the scheme is for a first passport. An applicant who already holds one has nothing to claim.

The two published exclusions mirror the eligibility line by line: private-college students and existing passport holders, per the myScheme record. The second bar does not care when or why the earlier passport was issued; holding one at the time of application ends the claim, because the reimbursement exists only for a passport that did not previously exist.

There is no renewal cycle to speak of: the benefit is a one-time reimbursement tied to a first passport, and nothing in the scheme's material extends it to renewals or reissues.

The award equals the fee: Rs 1,500, which the department's page names as the fresh-passport charge payable online while booking the appointment, and which the Government of Haryana then bears by reimbursing the student through the college. The money moves in three steps, all at the standard passport pace.

No stipend, no tuition component, no recurring payment rides along. This is the passport fee and only the passport fee.

The paperwork splits into two familiar halves and one student-specific addition. The address and date-of-birth proofs are the standard Passport Seva set; the student layer adds a student ID card and a bona fide certificate issued by the college, and the list even anticipates students whose original educational certificates are locked away, accepting a letter stating the originals are unavailable alongside photocopies attested by the head of the institution, per the department's document list. The bona fide certificate is the item to arrange first, since it comes from the college office rather than your own files.

For the reimbursement leg, the claim on the department portal is filed with a copy of the issued passport, according to the myScheme record.

The application runs across two portals, in a fixed order. The passport comes first: register on the Passport Seva portal, fill the fresh-application form, then use the Pay and Schedule Appointment link to pay the fee and book a slot, as the department's walkthrough lays out. Print the application receipt: it carries your Application Reference Number and the appointment details. At the Passport Seva Kendra, carry the originals, collect a token, and move through the document and verification counters; a granting officer then clears the application for police verification, after which the passport is printed and dispatched.

Tracking works off that receipt. It carries the Application Reference Number, per the department's walkthrough, and the Passport Seva portal where the application was filed is where its progress is followed; the Haryana portal handles only the reimbursement leg.

Only after the booklet arrives does the Haryana side begin. Log in to the department's passport reimbursement portal with the same credentials as the ERP and Admissions Portal, and file the fee reimbursement claim. The college verifies it and pays the fee back; after the bill clears, the amount lands in the student's bank account, per the myScheme record. If the money is slow, the college office is the right first stop, because verification and payment both happen at that level.

There is no selection in the merit sense: no ranked list, no interview, no published cap on how many students a college may reimburse. The claim is an entitlement checked against the eligibility conditions, with the college doing the checking, and neither the myScheme record nor the department portal publishes any criterion beyond those conditions.

Three terms shape every claim. The fee is always paid first, out of the student's pocket, at the time of booking. Reimbursement follows successful issuance, not application, so a refused or lapsed passport application produces no payout. And the scheme buys no priority: the department states that the application procedure and processing time are the same as for a regular passport, so the Kendra treats a scheme applicant like any other.

The scheme is run by the Directorate of Higher Education Haryana from Shiksha Sadan, Sector 5, Panchkula, with portal support at itcell.dghe.hry@gmail.com, as published on the How to Apply page. For anything about a specific claim, the college that verifies and pays it is the more useful door than the directorate.