Kalakar Kritadnyata Nidhi: Scholarships/Incentives(KKN-SI)

Overview

About KKN-SI

The student never signs this form. Kalakar Kritadnyata Nidhi is a welfare fund for aged Goan artists, and the scholarship for a ward in higher education is one of seven heads a recognised artist ticks on a single application to the Directorate of Art and Culture (Kalakar Kritadnyata Nidhi application form 2025-26). Families search for it as a scholarship, find the Rs 750 monthly figure the 2009 notification sets (Kalakar Kritadnyata Nidhi notification), and then meet an application that asks for the parent's date of birth, field of art and testimonials rather than the child's marks.

This is a hardship fund with an education head inside it, not a scholarship scheme with a hardship clause. The Government of Goa framed it by notification DAC/3/KKN/4009 dated 14 January 2009, published in the Official Gazette Series I No. 43 of 22 January 2009, to sanction financial assistance to aged needy Goan artists and their dependent family in indigent circumstances (Kalakar Kritadnyata Nidhi notification).

The reading that matters for a student is structural. Medical treatment, a daughter's marriage, house repair after a natural calamity, a funeral, self employment, a lumpsum grant on the artist's death and this scholarship all draw on the same fund, and the same sub-committee decides between them. The notification earmarks Rs 10.00 lakhs a year for the whole scheme, held from the financial year 2009-2010 in a separate Public Ledger Account (scheme notification). A degree course is competing for room in that account with a heart operation.

That also explains the search results. Every head is published under the parent scheme's own name, so a query for the scholarship returns the funeral grant of up to Rs 10,000 and the lumpsum grant of up to Rs 20,000 on an artist's death beside it, and all of them are tick-boxes on the one form (scheme notification; application form 2025-26).

Who runs it

Provider

At a glance

Key details

Calendar

Important dates

No opening or closing date is published for this scheme, and none is implied by the text: applications are received at the Directorate on working days rather than in an announced window (scheme notification). The only calendar marker is the form itself, which is issued against a financial year and currently reads 2025-26 (application form 2025-26).

For a family, the date that matters is the admission date. Because the scholarship is counted from the currency of the academic year and released half yearly, filing soon after the ward's admission is confirmed is what keeps the first release inside the same year.

Who can apply

Eligibility criteria

Two people have to clear the test at the same time, and the parent is the harder of the two.

The artist must be Goan by birth and upbringing, must already hold recognition from the Directorate of Art and Culture, must be not less than 50 years of age, and must have annual family income from all sources not exceeding Rs 2,00,000 (scheme notification). Recognition is a status the artist holds before applying, not something this form confers, and the age floor is the clause that quietly ends most enquiries: a mid-career musician with a child already in college sits outside the scheme until the Government relaxes the criterion for a deserving case, which the notification permits it to do.

The ward's side is deliberately broad. The wards of the recognised artist should be enrolled in a recognised educational institution for a post graduate, degree or professional course, and the notification places no restriction on where that institution sits (scheme notification). No merit bar, no cut-off percentage and no course list beyond those three categories appears anywhere in the scheme text.

Who cannot apply

Exclusions

The absence of an exclusion list under this head is deliberate rather than an omission, and the notification proves it by writing one everywhere else. A medical claimant may not draw reimbursement from any other Government department or policy for the same treatment; a natural calamity claimant may not claim the benefit from any other source for the same purpose; and only an applicant who has never taken a self employment benefit from any Government scheme, autonomous body or corporation is eligible under that head (scheme notification). The scholarship head carries no equivalent bar, so another scholarship elsewhere does not by itself void a claim here.

What the form does instead is put everything on the record. It asks the artist to declare whether the family already receives a grant or financial assistance from any other government body for the same purpose, whether the artist holds Kala Samman financial assistance, a State Award, Kala Gaurav or a State Reward, and whether assistance under this fund has been drawn before, with the purpose, date and amount (application form 2025-26). None of those is an automatic disqualification. All of them are in front of the sub-committee when it decides.

Continuation

Renewal conditions

The sanction dies with the academic year it was granted for. It runs for the currency of that year and is released half yearly, and the form is issued against a financial year, currently reading 2025-26 on both the heading and the receipt, so the second year of a three-year degree is a fresh application rather than a continuation (scheme notification; application form 2025-26). The Directorate's own statement of what it expects from applicants under its financial assistance schemes is the timely submission of documents for release of the next instalment (Citizen's Charter, Directorate of Art and Culture), which is where a family that stops filing loses the money rather than at any eligibility test.

What you get

Award & benefits

Rs 750 a month, for the months the academic year is actually running, paid in two half yearly releases. Vacation months are excluded from the count (scheme notification). There is no tuition reimbursement, no hostel component and no book or equipment grant attached to it.

The figure reads oddly small until it is placed next to its siblings inside the same fund.

Payment reaches a bank account. The form carries a mandate page for the bank name, branch, account number, type of account, MICR code, IFSC code and PAN (application form 2025-26).

• A monthly scholarship of ₹750/- is sanctioned to eligible wards during the currency of the academic year.
• The vacation period is excluded from the scholarship disbursement period.
• The scholarship is disbursed on a half-yearly basis.

What to prepare

Documents required

Neither of the two certificates this claim turns on is issued to the student. Recognition by the Directorate of Art and Culture and annual family income within Rs 2,00,000 are the eligibility conditions themselves, and the notification lists income certificates among the documentation issued by competent authorities that has to be enclosed (scheme notification).

The student's contribution is smaller than most families expect, and the paperwork for it is described twice with a gap between the two descriptions. The notification's scholarship clause asks for documentary proof of admission to the recognised institution and the birth certificate (scheme notification). The form's enclosure list for this head names only the proof of admission (application form 2025-26). Carry both.

The form then adds requirements the scheme record does not list at all. It asks for a photograph of the applicant, particulars of significant work in the artist's field with testimonials attached, a table of every person wholly dependent on the applicant with their age, relationship, marital status, occupation and monthly income, and signed recommendations from two persons or institutions with technical knowledge of the artist's work (application form 2025-26).

Treat that list as a hard gate. The notification states that where the relevant documentation issued by the competent authorities is not enclosed, the application shall be summarily rejected (scheme notification). Nothing in the text obliges the office to write back asking for a missing certificate.

Step by step

How to apply

Everything happens across one counter in Panaji, on paper. The eligible artist, the family, a co-artist or any member of the public may apply in the prescribed proforma directly to the Directorate of Art and Culture, and the forms are available at the office on working days (scheme notification). Use the address on the current form rather than the one in the notification: the 2009 text sends applicants to Shram Shakti Bhavan, while the 2025-26 form and the Citizen's Charter both put the Directorate at Sanskruti Bhavan, Patto, Panaji (application form 2025-26; Citizen's Charter).

The form carries a charge of Rs 10 with a receipt printed in duplicate for the applicant's copy and the office copy, and it asks at item 10 which head the assistance is sought under, where scholarships and incentives is option (e) (application form 2025-26). Tick the wrong box and the file is scrutinised against the wrong head's enclosure list.

Tracking a File the Portal Never Sees

The Directorate's other artist scheme has an online handle and this one does not. Kala Samman is filed on Goa Online, where submission returns an acknowledgement number by SMS and email specifically for application tracking, against a published processing time of sixty days (Goa Online, Kalasamman Scheme, Department of Art and Culture). A Kalakar Kritadnyata Nidhi form goes across the counter instead, so it generates no acknowledgement number and there is no status screen to refresh.

What replaces it is a published clock and a phone line. The Directorate's service standard for this scheme is release of funds within 60 days from the date of receipt of a complete application, and within 45 days where the head is medical aid, and the Citizen's Charter directs status queries to the department's Information and General Facilitation Centre helpdesk on 0832-2404711 (Citizen's Charter). If the file goes quiet past that, the same charter sets the complaint route: a grievance lodged in person or by telephone is acknowledged instantly with an inward number, one sent by email within 1 day and by post within 5 days, resolution is due within 30 days, and an unresolved case escalates to the Director with a further 15 days (Citizen's Charter). That inward number is the closest thing a paper applicant gets to a reference, so it is worth generating one rather than waiting silently.

How winners are picked

Selection process

Eligibility opens the door; it does not sanction the money. The Directorate forwards the application to a sub-committee constituted by the Government, the Director records recommendations to that sub-committee, and the sub-committee decides the quantum to be released before the Director disburses it on government approval (scheme notification). A monthly rate that reads as fixed still passes through a body with discretion over how much, and over which head of the fund gets served first.

The state's own accounts show how uneven that is in practice.

The following year kept the pattern. Against Rs 20 lakh allotted to the scheme in 2024-25, the Directorate utilised Rs 4.32 lakh (Government of Goa Annual Administration Report 2024-2025). The constraint on a claim here has rarely been the budget line. It is the number of complete, documented applications the sub-committee receives.

Fine print

Terms & conditions

The declaration on the form is an undertaking, not a formality: the applicant undertakes to refund any amount received if a statement made in the application is false (application form 2025-26).

Three clauses sit above the applicant. The Government may relax all or any clause of the scheme for reasons to be recorded, any question of interpretation is decided by the Government and that decision binds all concerned, and a grievance arising out of implementation is heard and decided by the Minister for Art and Culture, whose decision is final (scheme notification).

The scheme also ran on a stated term rather than in perpetuity. The 2009 notification set it to remain in force up to 31 March 2013 (scheme notification), and the Directorate is plainly still running it, with a form issued for 2025-26 and a budget line in the state's latest administration report (application form 2025-26; Annual Administration Report 2024-2025). The extension itself is not published alongside the original notification, so the operative document to work from is always the current year's form.

Get help

Contact

The named officer for this scheme is Assistant Cultural Officer I at the Directorate of Art and Culture, Sanskruti Bhavan, Patto, Panaji, Goa, on 0832-2404640 and at aco5-dac.goa@nic.in (Citizen's Charter). Status queries go to the facilitation centre helpdesk on 0832-2404711, and grievances to the Public Grievance Officer at pgo-dac.goa@nic.in, with the Director and the Grievance Officer available in person every Tuesday from 10:00 to 13:00 hrs (Citizen's Charter).

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.

Explore more

Related scholarships

References

Sources