HSCST Fellowship Programme(HSCSTFP)

No fixed calendar governs this fellowship, which is why the record carries blank open and close dates; a round exists only once HSCSIT advertises it, and it advertises only after a NET result is out. The recent pattern:

The closing month has drifted from April to June to September across the last three rounds, so watch the News and Event section of dst.highereduhry.ac.in, the place the advertisements themselves tell candidates to look, and the advertisement dropdown on the application portal rather than assuming a season. The age cut-off date moves with each round too.

The filter most applicants misread is the NET sitting. Each advertisement binds its round to a named test date: the 2026 notification admits only candidates who qualified for JRF or for lectureship in the joint CSIR-UGC test held on 18 December 2025, and the May 2025 round was tied to the sittings of July 2024. An older NET qualification does not carry into a newer round; you wait for the advertisement that names your result.

Age is checked against a cut-off date the advertisement sets, not against the day you apply. The current round fixes the upper limit for JRF at 28 years as on 1 July 2025, relaxable by five years for SC, ST, women, physically handicapped and OBC candidates.

The detailed guidelines ask for a minimum of 55% at M.Sc. or equivalent, and that is where the screening of circumstances stops: no line in them asks what your parents earn, because the whole competition has already happened on the NET scoresheet. Residence still matters, though; the scheme record lists permanent residence of Haryana among its conditions and a Haryana domicile certificate in its document list.

myScheme leaves the exclusion field blank for this fellowship; the disqualifiers sit in the notification and the guidelines instead, and there are three of them. Drawing a fellowship or financial assistance from any other source bars you at entry, per the 2026 notification. During the tenure, the guidelines forbid any paid or honorary employment or private practice, and taking a paid assignment can mean repaying the entire fellowship amount on top of disciplinary action. At the application stage, a second application, a wrongly filled form or a missing essential document gets the submission summarily rejected.

The headline tenure of three years, extendable to five, is sanctioned in yearly slices, never in one go. The undertaking every fellow signs, printed in the guidelines, states the fellowship is initially for one year and extendable yearly at HSCSIT's discretion. Each further release of money waits on an annual progress report in the prescribed proforma for the period ending 31 March, plus a statement of accounts from your institution.

Publications are the renewal currency. Progress reports must attach published, accepted or communicated papers that acknowledge HSCSIT support; the guidelines warn that a report without them leads to termination, and that extension can be refused if the fellow does not acknowledge the council in print.

Upgradation runs on its own clock. After two years as JRF, a three-member expert committee, your guide, the head of department and an external expert not below associate professor rank, interviews you on your research progress. The committee can upgrade you to SRF, keep you as JRF for a third year, or end the fellowship, and it looks again at the end of the third year. A fourth year as SRF rides on the guide's recommendation; the fifth needs the committee once more, with publications attached.

Your NET result decides your slab. JRF-NET qualifiers are paid at par with CSIR/UGC rates, provided they are not availing the CSIR/UGC fellowship for a valid reason; LS-NET qualifiers sit on a lower slab.

The annual contingency grant of Rs 20,000 goes to the university, not to you, and the guidelines make it pro-rata for part years, with unspent balance carried forward for research needs such as books.

Two benefits rarely make it into summary pages. The stipend is exempt from income tax under section 10(16) of the IT Act, 1961, per the guidelines. And women fellows with fewer than two surviving children are entitled to full stipend for up to 135 days of maternity absence, sanctioned by the guide and paid after resuming duty with a medical certificate.

The upload list at application is shorter than the record's full list. The 2026 notification asks for six things: a 10th-standard certificate as age proof, a photograph, the NET certificate, the M.Sc. final-year certificate, a caste certificate where applicable, and disability proof where applicable. Keep the wider set ready anyway; the guidelines release the award only on receipt of your qualifying-degree details, NET particulars, place of work, research topic, supervisor's name and the institution's concurrence to provide facilities.

Only online applications are entertained. The 2026 notification spells out the flow on the DHE portal at harchhatravratti.highereduhry.ac.in/fellowship: select the advertisement number, fill in your details, generate and enter the OTP, upload the documents and submit before the last date. Use your own working email address and mobile number, and submit exactly once; duplicate or incomplete applications are rejected without a hearing.

Application status and stipend money travel on different rails. For the application itself, the DHE scholarship portal carries a Track Application page and a student login, and its Register Grievance and Track Grievance modules are the recorded channel for stuck applications. The money never touches that portal: the scheme record marks the fellowship as non-DBT, and the guidelines route the grant to your university against a claim bill, releasing the first payment only after your joining report reaches HSCSIT through your guide. Once you have joined, stipend delays are chased with the institution's finance office, not on the portal.

A stale entry on the state's common service portal adds confusion here: Saral Haryana lists an application form for the HSCST Fellowship but shows the service under modification, so the working route is the DHE portal named in the advertisement.

There is no HSCSIT entrance test and no interview at entry. Selection rests on performance in the NET conducted by CSIR, held generally in June and December, and the guidelines have the council advertise after CSIR declares results, screen applications against the advertisement, and award the fellowship once degree, NET, research topic, supervisor and institutional-concurrence details are in. The offer of award stays valid for one year. Interviews enter the picture only at the second-year upgradation assessment, never at entry.

Timelines have an old benchmark: when the department moved the scheme online, its 2016 press note committed to offering the fellowship within four months of the closing date.

The undertaking is stricter than the benefits suggest. Per the guidelines, the fellow is a full-time researcher: sitting a competitive exam needs the guide's permission with intimation to HSCSIT, resignation needs a month's notice through the guide, and a transfer to another institution is allowed only in compelling circumstances, never in the last six months of tenure or after the thesis is submitted. A permitted stint of temporary paid lectureship or research work, capped at one year across the whole tenure, runs without stipend and still counts inside the tenure.

The council also keeps the intellectual property. Commercial exploitation and patent rights arising from the research rest exclusively with HSCSIT, every publication must acknowledge its support, and one copy of each paper goes to the council. The award itself ends with the tenure and carries no assurance of later employment or absorption.

HSCSIT operates from the Directorate of Science and Technology complex at Bays No 35-38, Sector 2, Panchkula, 134109, the address printed on the fellowship notifications. The directorate's site lists 0172-2563439 for its Panchkula office. For application-stage problems, the grievance modules on the DHE scholarship portal are the channel the department actually records.