Lakshadweep Scholarship Scheme(LKDSS)

Overview

About LKDSS

Most of what is written about this scheme repeats its portal record, and the portal record leaves out the two rules that settle a claim: where the student and the parents were born, and whether the course could have been studied in the islands at all. Both sit in the Directorate of Education's own rules, and both are tested before anything is sanctioned. The filing route has also moved recently, first onto the National Scholarship Portal, and then again for students studying inside Lakshadweep.

Lakshadweep runs 32 government schools and 4 colleges across 10 inhabited islands, with 11,761 students enrolled from pre-school to Class 12 in academic year 2024-25, according to the UT Department of Education. That is the whole reason the scheme exists in the shape it does. Past school, and past a short list of island courses, an islander studies on the mainland, and the Administration carries the cost of getting there and staying there.

The Directorate of Education at Kavaratti administers it. Scholarships for islanders in mainland institutions have been disbursed through the National Scholarship Portal from the 2020-21 academic year onward, as the Directorate stated when it opened the 2024-25 cycle in its scheme notice. In September 2025 it closed the other route as well: an office memorandum signed by the Director of Education discontinued paying higher-education students through the principals of the DIET and the senior secondary schools, and named five island institutions whose students must register on NSP instead, per the notice published on the UT website. Island-level processing of claims ended with it.

Who runs it

Provider

At a glance

Key details

Calendar

Important dates

The portal record carries an opening date and no closing date, because the closing date is set fresh each year by the Directorate rather than by the scheme. The window has opened in late summer and closed in autumn in recent cycles, and it has been extended more than once.

Watch the UT website rather than the portal alone. Each of those windows was announced there first, and the orientation the Directorate ran for students was advertised the same way.

Who can apply

Eligibility criteria

Birth and residence decide this before marks do. The nativity condition in the rules asks either that the student and both parents were born in Lakshadweep, or that one parent is an islander and both that parent and the student live in the islands, and it is the first thing the Directorate verifies.

The second gate is the one the portal record never spells out. Educational concessions on the mainland are granted only for the standards, classes or courses for which no facility exists in any island of the Union Territory, and the scheme rules relax that only on grounds of health or physical disability, and only where the Administration satisfies itself of the case. A student who could have taken the same course at home is outside the scheme rather than lower in a queue.

No income ceiling appears anywhere in those rules. They state the object plainly, that no student should be stopped from an academic career on the ground of poverty alone, and then rest the award on clearing the qualifying examination and meeting the nativity test. The income certificate on the document list is a paper the Directorate collects, not a threshold it publishes.

Who cannot apply

Exclusions

The portal record leaves this section blank. The rules do not. A scholar may not hold another regular scholarship or stipend, has to surrender any such award, and has to refund whatever was already drawn under it before claiming here. Concessions granted by the institution itself, or by the Administration, may be kept. Islanders in research or in postgraduate technical courses get the benefit only where they take no other scholarship or fellowship at all.

Two more are easy to trip over. Where hostel accommodation is offered, on the mainland or in the islands, and the student declines it, no scholarship is paid. And the award is tenable for a full-time course of studies only, so a part-time or correspondence enrolment does not qualify however well the nativity test is met.

Continuation

Renewal conditions

Renewal is annual, and nothing about it is automatic. The award continues from year to year on satisfactory progress, on the strength of an annual progress report that the head of the institution completes and sends to the Director of Education along with the scholar's own renewal application. The nativity certificate goes with that application every year, not only the first. In the same class or standard the scholarship is ordinarily tenable for a single year, and the Director of Education may allow a repeat year in that same standard for reasons recorded, but not more than that in a whole course.

Losing it is easier than keeping it. Unsatisfactory progress, leaving the chosen course before it ends without the Director of Education's prior approval, or irregular attendance all make the award liable to forfeiture on a report from the head of the institution, and a scholarship once cancelled or forfeited is not restored.

On the portal, renewal is a separate filing on its own clock. When the Directorate extended the 2022-23 window, fresh applications ran to 30/11/2022 while renewals from the 2020-21 batch ran to 10/12/2022 and had to carry the bills and receipts for the later years of the course, per the extension notice.

What you get

Award & benefits

Two separate things are paid at the higher-education level, which is why a single headline figure never describes this scheme properly: a monthly scholarship, and an annual lump sum grant on top of it, both set by course group and both revised together by order of the Department of Education. School-level students carry a monthly rate only, and the rate for studying at an institution inside the islands is set apart from the mainland rate.

Hostel students sit on a different footing again. Boarding and lodging in a hostel are met on the bills the hostel authorities present rather than at a flat rate, with pocket money paid alongside, and the rules also carry the passage: actual ship or train fare for the journey between the institution and the student's native island. Fee concession runs through the scheme as well, with no fee charged in government schools in the islands and full concession for recognised institutions on the mainland. The slab table itself, monthly rate and lump sum side by side for each course group, is set out in the scheme record printed below.

• Name of the CoursesScholarship AmountPre-degree courses, Post Matric certificate courses, Post Matric Diploma courses, Degree Courses in Arts, Science, commerce, B.Ed., LLB etc.Rate of monthly scholarship ₹ 1,800/-, Rate of lump sum grant ₹ 1,500/-Post Graduate course in Arts, Science, Commerce, Law etc.Rate of monthly scholarship ₹ 2,100/-, Rate of lump sum grant ₹ 1,800/-MBBS, BDS, Engineering Degree, MBA, BVSC, BSC(Agriculture) etc.Rate of monthly scholarship ₹ 2,100/-, Rate of lump sum grant ₹ 3,600/-Post Graduate Course in Medicine, Engineering and Veterinary Science, Agriculture etc. and Research Studies like Ph.D.Rate of monthly scholarship ₹ 3,000/- , Rate of lump sum grant ₹ 9,000/-High school courses or equivalent.₹ 1,200/- per monthPrimary school courses (1 to VIII) ₹ 600/- per monthSecondary school courses (VIII to X)₹ 200/- per monthPlus two students to whom course facilities are available in the island of which the student is native₹ 450/- per monthStudents of Bitra Island studying in Secondary Std. in other Island₹ 450/- per monthStudents of Plus 2 courses who belong to other islands than where the Institutions is situated and staying outside hostel for want of hostel accommodation₹ 750/- per month Students of high school staying outside hostel for want of accommodation in the hostel₹ 600/- per month

What to prepare

Documents required

The portal record lists the generic set. What the Directorate actually asks for at the hard-copy stage is longer and more specific, and it is set out in the 2024-25 scheme notice: a confirmation page signed by the head of the institution, a copy of the nativity or ST certificate, the Plus Two or degree certificate as applicable, a bonafide certificate signed by the head of the institution, a hostel approval certificate where the student is in a college-approved hostel, the fee statement of the institution and the hostel signed by the head of the institution, and original fee receipts carrying an authorised signature.

Two of those are worth arranging early. The hostel approval certificate and the fee statement both have to be signed by the head of the institution, which on the mainland means a signature chased in person during a term.

Step by step

How to apply

A claim starts the way every portal claim now starts, behind a One Time Registration against the student's Aadhaar, and then goes its own way. Biometric authentication became compulsory in the cycle the Directorate opened for 2024-25, and it said so in its own scheme notice rather than leaving islanders to discover it at the portal. What that means in practice is Aadhaar-based face authentication, and the Directorate itself records that islanders get stuck on it: it put on an online orientation session because the procedure is technical and runs across several software platforms. Where the authentication will not work at home, a common service centre runs the whole sequence, reference number through to a filed form, at a fixed Rs 30.00 including taxes.

Submitting the form is roughly the halfway mark. The institution has to verify it on the portal, defective applications go back for correction, and the nodal officers at district, UT and ministry level clear it after that. Then the paper follows the file: the signed confirmation page and the supporting documents have to reach the Directorate of Education at Kavaratti by the date printed on the notice.

Tracking is split. Application Status on the portal answers for the form, while Track Your Payment hands the student off to the PFMS Know Your Payment page for the money. That split bites harder on this scheme than on most, because a claim the college has already verified can still be stopped at Kavaratti for a confirmation page that never arrived, and nothing on either screen will say so.

How winners are picked

Selection process

There is no merit list and no ranking. The rules make the award turn on the results of the qualifying examination, with pass marks the threshold, and then on the nativity condition, and they place no restriction on how many scholarships may be awarded at any stage in a year, subject only to funds being available in the Administration's sanctioned budget. In practice the decision is made by the verification chain rather than by a selection committee: the institution confirms the student is on its rolls and paying what the fee statement says, the nodal officers clear it, and the Director of Education sanctions.

Fine print

Terms & conditions

Professional courses come with a condition attached that nothing on the portal mentions. The scholarship is granted only after the student executes a bond to serve the Administration in the islands for at least five years, should the Administration ask within a year of the course finishing, and failure to comply makes the parent or guardian liable to refund the entire scholarship already received. The parent or guardian separately signs an undertaking to refund the amounts drawn if the scholarship is forfeited under the rules.

Payment terms are equally exact. The scholarship is sanctioned for the academic year and paid monthly in advance, and the gap between the concession ending in one class and resuming in the next is not paid for, with no relaxation entertained on that point.

Get help

Contact

The Directorate of Education at Kavaratti runs a Scholarship Cell that handles these claims, and it is the office to approach on a stuck application rather than the NSP helpdesk. The department publishes the Director of Education's office number as 04896262419 and the departmental email as lak-doe@nic.in on its own page; the postal address is Department of Education, Kavaratti, Union Territory of Lakshadweep.

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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