My College Is AICTE Approved. Can I Apply Under the INAE Travel Grant Scheme?

No. INAE's page for this scheme tells AICTE approved applicants to apply for travel assistance under the AICTE-INAE Travel Grant Scheme instead, and the page for that scheme sends non-AICTE applicants back here (INAE Travel Grant Scheme, AICTE-INAE Travel Grant Scheme). The approval status of the institution is the only thing that decides it, and a one-line summary is not a safe place to check it: the government's own myScheme entry for this scheme opens by describing it as being for students from AICTE approved engineering colleges, which is the other scheme's scope, while the eligibility list further down the same record has it right (myScheme).

Why Do Some Listings Still Say 8.5 CGPA and a Rs 1 Lakh Ceiling?

Because they are quoting the older guidelines. The 2020 document set the bar at a minimum of 8.5 CGPA or 80 percentage and capped support at Rs 1 lakh; the current guidelines set 8 CGPA or equivalent percentage and Rs 1.5 lakh (INAE, 2020 guidelines, INAE guidelines). Read the figures off the guidelines PDF linked on the scheme page, not off an aggregator.

Does an Online Presentation Get the Same Money as a Trip?

No. For a paper presented online through video conference, the scheme reimburses the registration fee and nothing else, since no air fare, visa fee or surface travel arises (INAE guidelines). The Rs 1.5 lakh figure belongs to physical participation.

Can Two Authors of the Same Paper Both Apply?

No. Where two or more applications come in for the same paper, only one is considered and priority goes to the first author, and a no objection certificate from the other authors has to be enclosed with that application (INAE guidelines).

Is a Poster Presentation Eligible, or Only a Paper Read Out?

The application form lists the purpose of the visit as an oral presentation, a poster presentation or an exhibit presentation, with room to specify another form (INAE proforma). What the guidelines fix is that the student holds a letter of acceptance for presenting the research paper at the event (INAE guidelines).

Is the Money Paid Before the Conference?

No. The grant is released against a claim form submitted within one month after the event, and it is paid out in a single instalment at that point (INAE guidelines). Plan on carrying the cost yourself and recovering it afterwards.

Is There Another National Travel Grant a B.Tech Student Can Fall Back On?

Not an obvious one. ANRF, which absorbed the Science and Engineering Research Board, runs International Travel Support for presenting a research paper at an international scientific event held abroad, but it is written for researchers rather than students: the applicant has to be an active Indian researcher engaged in R&D work at a recognised Indian institution or laboratory, and has to already hold a Master's degree in science or a Bachelor's degree in a professional course when the application goes in (ANRF, International Travel Support). A pre-final or final year B.Tech student holds neither.

Is There a Last Date to Apply Each Year?

None is published. The only deadline in the scheme runs backwards from the student's own presentation date, at least ten weeks ahead of it, and the claim deadline runs forwards from the end of the event (INAE guidelines).

What is the minimum academic requirement to apply?

Applicants must have secured a minimum CGPA of 8.0 or equivalent percentage in the qualifying examination.

Is financial assistance available for online conference presentations?

Yes. Students presenting their research paper online are eligible for reimbursement of 100% of the registration fee.

What is the maximum financial assistance available under the scheme?

For physical participation, the maximum assistance is ₹1.50 lakh per student.

How early should the application be submitted?

The application must be submitted at least 10 weeks before the scheduled date of presentation.

Can a student receive assistance under this scheme more than once?

No. A student is eligible for financial assistance only once during the course of study under this scheme.

What happens if a research paper has multiple authors?

A No Objection Certificate from the co-author(s) must be submitted. If multiple applications are received for the same paper, only one application will be considered, with preference given to the first author.

Can I apply without a paper acceptance letter?

No, a valid paper acceptance letter is mandatory.

Can multiple authors claim the grant for the same paper?

No, only one author can receive the grant for a particular paper.

When should the reimbursement claim be submitted?

The claim must be submitted within one month after the event.

Scholarship

INAE Travel Grant Scheme for Engineering Students from IITs/NITs/Govt. Approved Engineering Colleges/Institutions other than AICTE(ITGSESECIA)

Q: Who can apply under the INAE Travel Grant Scheme?

Students of B.E./B.Tech, Integrated M.Tech, M.E./M.Tech and other eligible engineering programmes studying in IITs, NITs, Government-approved Engineering Colleges/Institutions (other than AICTE-approved institutions), and recognized universities can apply, subject to fulfilling the eligibility criteria.

Cash

CentralCentrally Sponsored Scheme

Ministry of Education All India myScheme record

Eligibility

The applicant must be a pre-final or final year student of B.E./B.Tech or Integrated M.Tech; or

Region

All India

Award

Cash

Deadline

Not published by the source

Overview

About ITGSESECIA

The Indian National Academy of Engineering runs two travel grants with nearly the same name, and which one a student may use is settled by who approved their institution, not by the paper. The INAE Travel Grant Scheme is the half meant for students who are not at an AICTE approved institution, and INAE's own scheme page routes AICTE applicants away from it in a single line. The academic bar, the ceiling and the filing deadline are all different across the two, so applying under the wrong one wastes the lead time the grant needs.

This scheme pays back part of what it costs an engineering student to carry an accepted research paper to an international scientific event, and it is open only to Bachelor's and Master's level students. The guidelines set the eligible pool as students from IITs, NITs and government approved engineering colleges and institutions other than by AICTE, along with other universities (INAE guidelines), and the scheme page tells a student whose institute is AICTE approved to apply for travel assistance under the AICTE-INAE Travel Grant Scheme instead (INAE Travel Grant Scheme). The earlier version of the guidelines named the same pool more bluntly, as students from IITs, NITs and non-AICTE approved engineering colleges and institutions (INAE, 2020 guidelines).

The rules a student is held to today are the 2022 revision the scheme page links, and they moved in the applicant's favour on both of the numbers that matter. The academic bar came down from a minimum of 8.5 CGPA or 80 percentage in the older guidelines to a minimum of 8 CGPA or equivalent percentage, and the ceiling on total support rose to Rs 1.5 lakh from Rs 1 lakh (INAE guidelines, INAE, 2020 guidelines). The same revision recognised an online presentation as a fundable mode, and INAE stopped asking for a posted hard copy of the form.

Who runs it

Provider

Ministry of Education

Central Government

Department Of Higher Education · All India Council For Technical Education (AICTE), And Indian National Academy Of Engineering (INAE)

At a glance

Key details

Level	Central
Scheme type	Centrally Sponsored Scheme
Category	Education & Learning, Travel & Tourism
Beneficiaries	Individual
Benefit type	Cash
Application mode	Online
Direct Benefit Transfer	Not published by the source
Tags	Travel, Grant, Engineering Student, AICTE
Source record	myScheme, 2026-07-08official-site· 2026-07-08

Calendar

Important dates

Nothing here is keyed to a calendar year. Every date runs off the student's own conference instead, so a paper accepted in March for a September presentation sits on a completely different clock from one accepted and presented inside the same quarter.

Stage	When	Who acts
Application emailed to INAE	At least ten weeks before the date of presentation	Student, endorsed by the Head of the Institution
Evaluation by subject experts	Not published	INAE
Claim form with enclosures	Within one month after the event is over	Student
Release of the grant	In one instalment, after the claim is processed	INAE

The ten week rule is the one that quietly disqualifies people. Conference acceptances often land six or seven weeks before the presentation date, and a student in that position has already missed the filing window even though the paper is genuinely accepted.

Who can apply

Eligibility criteria

Two conditions do most of the filtering: the year of study and the institution. Pre-final and final year students of B.E., B.Tech or Integrated M.Tech qualify, as do first and second year students of M.E. and M.Tech, and the paper must already carry a letter of acceptance for presentation at a conference, seminar, symposium, workshop or exhibition abroad (INAE guidelines). A first year B.Tech student with an accepted paper has nothing to apply to here, and neither does a PhD scholar.

The institutional test is where applicants land in the wrong queue. INAE splits its student travel support down the middle, and the two halves are not interchangeable.

Test	INAE Travel Grant Scheme	AICTE-INAE Travel Grant Scheme
Where the student studies	IITs, NITs, government approved engineering colleges and institutions other than by AICTE, other universities	AICTE approved engineering institutions
Academic bar	Minimum 8 CGPA or equivalent percentage	Minimum 7 CGPA or 65 percentage
Ceiling on total support	Rs 1.5 lakh per student	Rs 1 lakh per student
Filing lead time	At least ten weeks before the presentation	At least eight weeks before the presentation
Hard copy of the form	Not to be sent	Sent by post in addition to email

The AICTE-INAE half also reaches programmes this one does not name, including MS by research, M.Sc in engineering, dual degree B.Tech and M.Tech, and any degree with a minimum of four years of engineering study (AICTE-INAE guidelines). A student on one of those programmes at a non-AICTE institution is in an unaddressed gap, and the honest step is to write to INAE before assuming either scheme covers them.

The applicant must be a pre-final or final year student of B.E./B.Tech or Integrated M.Tech; or
The applicant must be a first or second-year student of M.E./M.Tech; and
The applicant must be pursuing studies in an IIT, NIT, Government-approved Engineering College/Institution (other than AICTE-approved institutions), or another recognized university.
The applicant must have secured a minimum CGPA of 8.0 or equivalent percentage in the qualifying examination.
Possess a letter of acceptance for presenting a research paper at an international conference, seminar, symposium, workshop, exhibition, or similar scientific event held abroad.
The applicant has not previously received financial assistance under this scheme during the same course of study.

Who cannot apply

Exclusions

Nothing is barred here by category of student. The refusals are written instead as conditions attached to the money, and each of them is capable of ending a claim after the trip. Air fare is reimbursable only where the expenditure has not been claimed from any other source (INAE guidelines), and the estimated expenditure block of the application form asks in as many words whether the student has approached any other organisation or agency for financial assistance (INAE proforma).

Where a paper carries more than one author, only one application for it is considered, with priority to the first author, and the co-authors' no objection certificates have to be enclosed (INAE guidelines). Two classmates cannot both be funded off the same accepted paper. The certificate the student signs adds one more: if financial assistance later arrives from the organisers or any other agency, the student undertakes to pay the amount back, and the same certificate binds them to return the entire amount if the particulars turn out to be incorrect (INAE proforma).

Continuation

Renewal conditions

A student may draw this support once in the whole of their course of study, which makes a second application a dead letter rather than a renewal (INAE guidelines). The application form checks it directly: it carries a field for details of financial support received earlier for international travel under this scheme, and another for international events attended in the last three years, listed in chronological order (INAE proforma). A student who used the grant in the pre-final year and has a second paper accepted in the final year is outside it.

What you get

Award & benefits

Only the air fare is shared. Everything else the scheme touches is reimbursed in full, up to an overall cap that applies to the sum of all the heads together.

Cost head	Physical participation	Online participation
Registration fee	Reimbursed in full	Reimbursed in full
Visa fee	Reimbursed in full	Not covered
Air fare	50% of the actual fare on a discounted or concessional ticket, if not claimed from another source	Not covered
Institution to the nearest airport and back	Actual fare, not exceeding AC II class train fare	Not covered
Ceiling	Rs 1.5 lakh per student, across every head above	None published, and only one head is covered

The surface travel head is worth reading twice, because it is written as a fare ceiling and not as an expense. A student who takes a cab from campus to the airport is reimbursed at what the train would have cost in AC II class, not at what the cab cost. Nothing in the guidelines funds accommodation or a daily allowance abroad, so lodging and meals at the venue stay with the student.

Financial Support for Physical Participation
Reimbursement of 100% of the registration fee.
Reimbursement of 100% of the visa fee.
Reimbursement of 50% of the actual airfare for discounted/concessional air tickets, provided the expenditure is not claimed from any other source.
Reimbursement of travel expenses from the institution to the nearest airport and back, limited to AC II-Class train fare.
Maximum financial assistance per student is limited to ₹1,50,000/-.
Financial Support for Online Participation
Reimbursement of 100% of the registration fee incurred for presenting the research paper online through video conferencing.

What to prepare

Documents required

The enclosure list is only half of what the file has to carry. The proforma itself asks for a semester by semester record of CGPA or percentage alongside the overall figure, so a student cannot round up a weak semester out of view, and it asks for the guide or supervisor's designation, address and contact details as a separate block (INAE proforma).

Two short written pieces are easy to miss until the last day. The form asks for a note on the project impact and a note on the expected outcome, each held to 100 words, and both are also listed among the enclosures (INAE proforma). The costing block wants anticipated air fare on a discounted or concessional ticket, the registration fee, the visa fee and a total, in rupees, which means a student needs a quoted fare and the organiser's fee schedule in hand before the form can be completed at all.

Curriculum Vitae (CV).

Passport-size photograph.

Letter of Acceptance from the organizers of the international event.

Abstract or full text of the research paper.

Brief note on the impact and expected outcomes of the research work.

Certificate from the student in the prescribed format.

Endorsement certificate from the Head of the Institution.

No Objection Certificate(s) from co-author(s), wherever applicable.

Any other supporting documents prescribed by INAE.

Step by step

How to apply

There is no portal. A scanned copy of the completed form, signed by the Head of the Institution and carrying every enclosure, goes by email to inaehq@inae.in, and it has to reach INAE at least ten weeks before the date on which the paper is to be presented (INAE guidelines). INAE's scheme page adds that hard copies of the form are not to be sent, which is the opposite of what the AICTE-INAE route asks for (INAE Travel Grant Scheme).

The endorsement is not a formality that can be worked around. Where the Head of the Institution has not signed the endorsement in the soft copy, the guidelines require the email itself to come from the Head of the Institution's official email ID (INAE guidelines). Either the signature or the sending address has to belong to the head of the institute, so the application is never fully in the student's own hands.

Expect to wait without a tracker. Neither the scheme page nor the guidelines describes an acknowledgement, a reference number or anywhere to look a pending file up, and the guidelines add that submitting a proposal does not automatically mean it has the approval (INAE guidelines, INAE Travel Grant Scheme). The ten week rule is what stands in for one: filed at the outer edge of it, a long silence still leaves room to buy the ticket near the fare that was quoted in the estimated expenditure block, rather than at whatever the fare has climbed to by then.

1
Apply online
The official links on this page lead to the application portal.

How winners are picked

Selection process

Proposals that arrive complete in all respects are evaluated by subject experts, and that is the whole of what INAE publishes about how the decision is taken (INAE Travel Grant Scheme). No marking scheme, no weighting between the CGPA and the standing of the event, and no annual quota of grants has been put out. The machinery is at least separate from the AICTE-INAE side: INAE's annual report for the year 2022 to 2023 lists a standing INAE Travel Grant Scheme committee with its own chairman and members, distinct from the committee that runs the AICTE-INAE version (INAE annual report 2022-23). Who sits on it now is not published, so the membership listed in an older report is not worth planning around.

How much of this ran in any given year is off the record too. INAE puts out no count of grants made under this scheme and no list of the students who received one, and its annual reports for 2023 to 2024 and for 2024 to 2025 do not mention the scheme at all (INAE annual report 2023-24, INAE annual report 2024-25). None of that is a notice of closure, and the scheme page and its guidelines are still up, but a student whose plans depend on the money should ask INAE by email whether applications are being taken before committing to a fare.

One thing the application form hints at is that the event's own selection matters. It asks for the status of the presenter, single author or one of the authors, and for the broad area of the event against a list of engineering fields, which suggests the file is read by someone from the discipline the paper sits in (INAE proforma).

Fine print

Terms & conditions

This is a reimbursement, not an advance. The claim form in the prescribed format, with all enclosures, has to be submitted within one month after the international event ends, and the entire amount is then disbursed to the candidate in one instalment (INAE guidelines). A student who cannot fund the ticket and the registration fee upfront cannot use this scheme, whatever their eligibility.

The certificate the student signs on the proforma sets out the rest of the undertaking: that the details given are correct, that the money will be used only for the purpose it was asked for, that it will be returned if the information is later found to be incorrect, and that it will be paid back if the organisers or another agency fund the same trip. The Head of the Institution separately certifies that the applicant is a bonafide student who has been selected to present at the named event (INAE proforma).

Get help

Contact

The current guidelines print no postal address at all, which follows from the rest of the scheme: hard copies are not wanted, so email is the only way in (INAE guidelines). Both the application and any question about it go to inaehq@inae.in. The Academy itself sits at Ground Floor, Block-II, Technology Bhavan, New Mehrauli Road, New Delhi 110016, and 011-26582475 is the number the scheme page lists, which is what to use when a file sent weeks ago has drawn nothing back and the presentation date is closing in (INAE Travel Grant Scheme).

Source

Official links

Guidelines Official Website myScheme (Government of India)

Questions

ITGSESECIA – FAQ

Frequently asked questions

From the official scheme FAQ (myScheme)

Read this

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.

References

Sources

INAE guidelines – inae.in
myScheme – myscheme.gov.in
ANRF, International Travel Support – anrfonline.in