Maulana Azad National Fellowship For Minority Students(MANF)

Overview

About MANF

The Maulana Azad National Fellowship stopped taking new scholars from 2022-23, and the Government said so in Parliament. On 8 December 2022 the Minister of Minority Affairs, Smt. Smriti Zubin Irani, answered a Lok Sabha question with the line that "the Government has decided to discontinue the MANF Scheme from 2022-23", because the fellowship overlapped with other schemes minority students were already inside (Press Information Bureau, 8 December 2022). The Ministry of Minority Affairs then put its own notice at the head of the MANF document list on its website, titled "Notice for discontinuation of Maulana Azad National Fellowship (MANF) Scheme from 2022-23" (Ministry of Minority Affairs, MANF page). The scheme is now in run-off: no new selections, and payments continuing only to the fellows already on its books.

MANF paid for research, not for a degree course. It ran as a five year fellowship for students from the six centrally notified minority communities doing regular, full-time M.Phil or PhD work inside India, and it gave the people who held it a title of their own: a MANF awardee was to be known as a Ministry of Minority Affairs scholar, with the University Grants Commission acting as nodal agency on the Ministry's behalf (MANF scheme guidelines). The single-page notice the Ministry published gives the reasoning in its own words: the UGC and CSIR fellowship schemes are open to candidates of all communities including minorities, minority students are also covered by the National Fellowship schemes for Scheduled Castes and OBCs run by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, and in view of that overlap the scheme was ended (Notice for discontinuation of MANF).

The scheme was not small when it stopped. UGC data quoted in the same Lok Sabha answer records 6,722 candidates selected between 2014-15 and 2021-22, and fellowships worth Rs 738.85 crore paid out across those years (PIB, 8 December 2022). Selections went back well before that window: the Ministry's since-inception statement carries community-wise selection numbers from 2009-10 onward (Ministry of Minority Affairs, selections since inception).

Some official pages have not caught up, and the myScheme record printed further down this page is one of them, still written in the present tense with a closing date that has long passed. The Union Budget's Notes on Demands for Grants does the same, describing MANF as a scheme whose "objective is to provide fellowships in the form of financial assistance to students belonging to Minority Communities" (Demand No. 70, Ministry of Minority Affairs). Neither means the fellowship reopened. The budget head survives because the Ministry is still paying scholars selected before the cut-off, which is exactly what it told Parliament it would do.

Where the Government points a minority research student instead is set out in a Rajya Sabha reply of 23 March 2023: the JRF schemes of UGC and CSIR, open to students of all categories, plus the National Fellowship schemes for Scheduled Castes and OBCs under the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment and the Scheduled Tribe scheme under the Ministry of Tribal Affairs (PIB, 23 March 2023). For a minority student who holds no other reserved category, that leaves the NET route to a UGC or CSIR JRF as the only one of those doors that opens.

Who runs it

Provider

At a glance

Key details

Calendar

Important dates

No MANF selection has been made since that closure, and no window is pending. Where a closing date still stands against the scheme, in the record further down this page as much as on the aggregator listings, it is a leftover field from the years the fellowship was being awarded, and meeting it would put nobody in front of a selection.

Who can apply

Eligibility criteria

Eligibility for MANF was decided by a national examination result, not by a scheme form. The guidelines in force at the end, effective from 2019-2020 and updated in July, 2020, required the candidate to belong to one of the minority communities notified under Section 2(c) of the National Commission for Minorities Act, 1992, namely Buddhist, Christian, Jain, Muslim, Sikh and Zoroastrian (Parsi), and to have cleared UGC-NET or the Joint CSIR-UGC NET before any award could be made (MANF scheme guidelines).

The NET result was not the only gate MANF put up. Income was measured on the parents or guardian rather than on the scholar, and MANF capped it at Rs 6.00 lakh per annum. MANF recognised four kinds of host: two university routes, under Sections 2(f) and 3 of the UGC Act, plus an Institution of National Importance and a degree-awarding body funded in full by the State or Central Government. A Section 2(f) or Section 3 university had to be NAAC accredited to take a MANF fellow, and the two government-backed categories did not (MANF scheme guidelines).

Having drawn a fellowship before closed the door. A scholar who had availed any fellowship earlier, completely or partially, was outside the scheme, and a scholar who had held MANF and let the tenure expire without completing the research work could not apply under it a second time (MANF scheme guidelines).

Who cannot apply

Exclusions

Employment was the exclusion that caught the most applicants. Employees of any university, college, educational institution or Central, State or UT government were barred from the fellowship even when on study leave or extraordinary leave to pursue the M.Phil or PhD, and a fellow later found working as an ad-hoc teacher, teaching assistant or research assistant had the payment discontinued forthwith, on an undertaking UGC took from every student (MANF scheme guidelines).

Stacking awards was the other. One fellowship at a time was the rule, and the declaration MANF demanded reached past the word fellowship: for the length of the award the scholar was to accept no other monetary benefit, scholarship or fellowship, hold no appointment paid or otherwise, and draw no emoluments, salary or stipend from any other source, the guidelines carving out one year of academic leave and nothing besides. A scholar already receiving something else had to relinquish it or forgo the selection (MANF scheme guidelines).

Continuation

Renewal conditions

Renewal under MANF was an assessment, not an application. At the two-year mark the monitoring clause had the awardee's research work examined, by UGC's own norms rather than the Ministry's; a finding that the progress was satisfactory extended the tenure by a further three years at Senior Research Fellow rates, and the JRF and SRF stages together could not exceed five years (MANF scheme guidelines).

That clock is the only part of MANF still running. The Ministry's standing position, repeated to the Lok Sabha, is that existing MANF fellows continue to receive the fellowship till the end of their respective tenure, subject to compliance with the extant guidelines (PIB, 10 August 2023).

One clause governed the move from M.Phil to PhD. The gap was measured from the date the M.Phil result was declared to the date of PhD admission, it could not run beyond two years, no fellowship was payable across it, and it was left out when the five-year tenure was counted (MANF scheme guidelines).

What you get

Award & benefits

Every MANF figure in circulation comes from one table, printed in the guidelines effective from 2019-2020 and updated in July, 2020. That is the vintage to hold in mind, because the guidelines themselves peg the JRF and SRF rates to the UGC fellowship "as amended from time to time" rather than fixing them.

Housing sat outside that table. Whether a MANF fellow drew House Rent Allowance at all depended on what the host institution had offered. A fellow it could not house drew HRA at 8%, 16% or 24%, on the Government of India's categorisation of the city where the research was being done. Where the institution did house the fellow, the entitlement shrank to the hostel fee alone; turning down a hostel seat that had been offered forfeited the HRA claim altogether. With no hostel to be had, the fellow's actual rent on single accommodation the institution arranged came back up to that same ceiling. None of it arrived automatically: HRA had to be claimed month by month, in a prescribed format, from the same institution that was already confirming the fellow every month for payment (MANF scheme guidelines).

Those printed rates have since been overtaken, and the Ministry of Minority Affairs issued paperwork of its own for MANF: its MANF page carries a circular headed "Revision of Fellowship Rates under Maulana Azad National Fellowship Scheme" together with the covering letter the Ministry sent UGC on the same subject (Ministry of Minority Affairs, MANF page). The enhancement behind those two documents is in the parliamentary record. Asked in the Rajya Sabha about the fellowship the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment runs for OBC students on the same UGC peg, that Ministry tabled the before-and-after with effect from 01.01.2023: Rs 31,000 to Rs 37,000 a month at Junior Research Fellow, Rs 35,000 to Rs 42,000 for the remaining tenure at Senior Research Fellow (PIB, 7 February 2024). Because MANF fixed no rate of its own and followed the UGC fellowship as amended, the revised figures, not the older printed ones, are where the scheme's rulebook points.

Money is still flowing through the head. The Ministry's budget shows actual MANF spending of Rs 25.00 crore in 2024-2025, a budget estimate of Rs 42.84 crore for 2025-2026 revised upward to Rs 53.84 crore, and Rs 36.14 crore provided for 2026-2027 (Demand No. 70, Ministry of Minority Affairs). Four years after the scheme closed to new entrants, the run-off is still a real line in the Union Budget.

• The rate of fellowship for JRF and SRF is at par with the UGC fellowship, presently the rates are as follows:
• Fellowship in Science Humanities and Social Science: ₹ 31,000/- p.m. for initial two years (JRF), and ₹ 35,000/- pm. for remaining tenure (SRF)- Fellowship in Engineering & Technology: ₹ 31,000/- p.m. for initial two years (JRF), and ₹ 35,000/- pm. for remaining tenure (SRF)- Contingency for Humanities & Social Sciences: ₹ 10,000/- p.a. for initial two years, and ₹ 20,500/- p.a. for remaining tenure- Contingency for Sciences, Engineering & Technology: ₹ 12,000/- p.a. for initial two years, and ₹ 25,000/- p.a. for remaining tenure- Escorts/Reader assistance (All subjects): ₹ 2,000/- p.m. in cases of physically and visually handicapped candidate

What to prepare

Documents required

MANF turned on two certificates, and the burden of checking them fell on the university rather than on a scholarship portal. The income certificate had to be issued by whichever authority the State or UT government had notified as competent for the purpose. The minority community certificate was the more unusual instrument: until the States and UTs had designated authorities issuing them, the guidelines allowed it to rest on an actionable and legally valid affidavit, expressly so that no candidate could take a fellowship by falsifying community status, and the university or institution had to verify it at the time the fellow joined (MANF scheme guidelines).

Two more checks stood between an award letter and a first payment. Nothing was updated on the payment portal until the university or institution had satisfied itself that the awardee was availing no other fellowship or project from any other organisation at the time of selection and answered every remaining condition in the guidelines. Separately, the fellow's bank account number went to PFMS for validation, and it was that validation which created the beneficiary ID the Direct Benefit Transfer paid into (MANF scheme guidelines).

Step by step

How to apply

The Ministry's own FAQ answers "How to apply/register for MANF?" without naming a MANF form anywhere in it. The candidate applied for and appeared in UGC-NET or the Joint CSIR-UGC Test, and had to enter for both the Junior Research Fellowship and Eligibility for Assistant Professor, qualifying for the Assistant Professor eligibility as well; the fellowship was awarded only through those two examinations (Ministry of Minority Affairs, MANF FAQs). Minority status came from what the candidate had already entered on that online test form, which is why the same FAQ warns that no request to alter category, community or other material information is entertained afterwards. UGC then drew the MANF list from merit in the examination, and the eligibility conditions were whatever the NET notification laid down (MANF scheme guidelines). Award letters from that process are still on UGC's MANF page, which stops at the June 2021 Joint CSIR-UGC Test and the merged Dec. 2020 and June 2021 UGC-NET session (UGC NET, MANF).

Where a Continuing Fellow Checks a Payment

A fellow still on the books does not chase the money directly. The guidelines put the updating of monthly confirmations and the payments that follow them on a dedicated web portal at scholarship.canarabank.in, worked by the host institution, and it is the same portal that carries the stop-payment link used when a fellow resigns or relinquishes the award (MANF scheme guidelines). The practical consequence is that a missing instalment is a question for the department that files the monthly confirmation, not for a public helpdesk. What the portal will not yield is a break-up by group: the Ministry told the Lok Sabha that community-wise and district-wise figures of beneficiaries are simply not captured on the Canara Bank fellowship portal (PIB, 10 August 2023).

How winners are picked

Selection process

The arithmetic was fixed before any name was known. Because the NET was held twice a year, MANF made 500 awards from each sitting, inside an annual ceiling of 1000, of which the guidelines reserved 250 for the science streams of the Joint CSIR-UGC NET and left 750 to subjects under UGC's own NET-JRF (MANF scheme guidelines).

Inside that ceiling three allocation rules did the sorting. Community-wise selection was made at national level on the pro-rata population of each notified community. 30% of the fellowships were earmarked for women and the remaining 70% left general, with a shortage of women candidates allowed to pass the fellowship to male students of the same minority community. And slots a community could not fill went to scholars of the other notified communities purely on merit (MANF scheme guidelines). Women cleared that earmark comfortably in practice: the Ministry's statement for the financial year 2018-19 records 468 women and 531 men among the 1000 selections (Ministry of Minority Affairs, selected candidates 2018-19).

Admission decided the queue. A minority candidate already holding an M.Phil or PhD seat when the NET result arrived was given preference and had three months from the issue of the JRF award letter to join, the fellowship commencing on the date the result was declared or the date of joining, whichever fell later. Only where such candidates ran short were NET-qualified candidates without admission taken, in order of merit in the examination, on an offer that stayed valid for three years from the date of the award letter (MANF scheme guidelines, Ministry of Minority Affairs, MANF FAQs).

Fine print

Terms & conditions

On a MANF award UGC had the last word: its decision was final, and no appeal lay against it except as provided under law in force. The cancellation clause reached a good deal further than bad research. It covered ineligibility surfacing at any point during the fellowship, a fellowship availed or claimed on false, wrong or misleading information, an adverse report from the institution, misconduct, misbehaviour or corrupt practice, unsatisfactory progress of the research work, plagiarism or unethical practice in any form, violation of the guidelines' own terms, a scholarship or fellowship being drawn from any other source, and the candidate being found employed during the M.Phil or PhD research (MANF scheme guidelines).

Where a fellowship had been obtained by fraudulent means the cancellation was automatic, and the amount disbursed was recoverable with interest at the State Bank of India's prevailing rate for student loans. Two administrative permissions are worth recording for anyone still inside a tenure: the place of research could be transferred once during the whole of it and no more, and both that transfer and any resignation were things the university did on the designated portal, not the scholar (MANF scheme guidelines).

Get help

Contact

Award and payment questions under MANF belong to UGC rather than to the Ministry. The MANF page on the UGC NET site lists net-bureau@ugc.gov.in and a helpline on 011-23604406 (UGC NET, MANF).

Scheme-level questions, including the discontinuation notice and every version of the guidelines, sit with the Ministry of Minority Affairs, which keeps all of them on the MANF page of its website (Ministry of Minority Affairs, MANF page).

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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