Mukhyamantri Alpsankhyak Chhatravas Yojana(MMACY)

Overview

About MMACY

Chhatravas means hostel, and that is the whole logic of this scheme. Bihar's Minority Welfare Department pays a student Rs 1,000 a month for living in one of its own minority hostels, so the money is downstream of a bed the department has already given you (Minority Welfare, Saran district administration). A family that starts by asking how to claim the grant has started one step late. The first question is whether the department runs a hostel in the district where the student studies, because that list is shorter than Bihar's district map.

Start with a warning about the address, because everything else depends on it. The department's e-Kalyan portal, which is where the hostel application form lives, could not be reached at all when we tested it in September 2026: the hostname ekalyan.bihar.gov.in returns no DNS record from the nameservers that answer for bihar.gov.in, and the older address the department used before it, ekalyan.bih.nic.in, resolves but accepts no connection on either the plain or the secure port. The department's live site still puts a link to that first address on its own page (Minority Welfare Department, Government of Bihar), and the national scheme record still names the second one as the place to apply (Mukhyamantri Alpsankhyak Chhatravas Yojana, myScheme). Neither link opened for us. Everything set out below about the online form is therefore drawn from archived copies of those screens, each dated where it is used, and the office that can actually take a question today is the District Minority Welfare Officer.

With that said, the department's own paperwork survives, and it is unusually detailed. Its hostel list ends at serial 45, and every entry names a building, a district and a seat total (Hostel List, Minority Welfare Department, Bihar, archived June 2024). One building in Muzaffarpur is sanctioned for 200 and is the largest on the list; Bhagalpur's boys' hostel, off Lower Nathnagar Road near T.N.B. College, carries 120; Begusarai has 72, Supaul 60, and the smaller of the two Rohtas buildings 50. Everything else on the list is a 100-seat building.

Set that list against the department's own roster of 38 district officers and ten districts have nothing on it: Araria, Arwal, Buxar, Jamui, Lakhisarai, Purnia, Samastipur, Sheohar, Sitamarhi and West Champaran, the last of which the roster files under its headquarters town, Bettiah (List of DMWO, Minority Welfare Department, archived June 2024). Each of those ten still has an officer answering for it. So there is somewhere to ring in every district, and a building to move into in only some of them.

Two names get used for the same thing and it is worth separating them once. On the e-Kalyan portal the cash line is titled Mukhyamantri Alpsankhyak Chhatravas Anudaan Yojna and described as a hostel grant of Rs 1,000 per student per month, while the hostels themselves sit under a separate heading, Alpsankhyak Chhatravas (e-Kalyan, Minority Welfare Department, Bihar, archived August 2026). Anudaan is the grant. The scheme a search engine calls Mukhyamantri Alpsankhyak Chhatravas Yojana is that grant, and admission to the building is the gate in front of it.

The published descriptions also disagree about who this is for, which is worth settling before a family reads a district page and rules itself out. Saran's district administration describes the beneficiaries as minority children studying in Class IX to XII, while the department's own admission screen admits students of any recognised school, college, university or technical institution (Minority Welfare, Saran district administration, hostel admission portal, Minority Welfare Department, archived August 2026). The building list settles it in practice: hostels sit inside Magadh University at Bodh Gaya, Tilkamanjhi Bhagalpur University, the Aligarh Muslim University centre at Kishanganj and Kosi College at Khagaria, which are not places a Class IX student attends.

Who runs it

Provider

At a glance

Key details

Calendar

Important dates

No statewide calendar exists for this. Admission windows are announced district by district, and they have landed in very different months. Madhepura's publicity circular for its three hostels ran from 30 July to 27 August 2024 (hostel publicity circular, District Minority Welfare Office, Madhepura). Banka's notice for enrolment at its minority hostel ran between 17/01/2022 and 31/01/2022 (Minority Welfare Office notice, Banka district administration).

Whether a round is open right now is a question only the district office can settle, and the department's own website is no longer able to answer it. The last archived copy of the portal still carries a news line announcing the hostel admission portal as open for the 2025 session (e-Kalyan, Minority Welfare Department, Bihar, archived August 2026), a banner that had outlived its session even before the site stopped resolving. Watch the district administration's notice board, where Madhepura and Banka both posted theirs, rather than waiting for a state-level announcement.

Who can apply

Eligibility criteria

Two tests decide the case, and the portal put both of them on the screen a candidate reads before registering. The applicant has to belong to a minority community. The applicant also has to be enrolled at a recognised school, college, university or technical institution, and that institution has to stand in the district being applied to, not in the district the family lives in (hostel admission portal, Minority Welfare Department, archived August 2026). The District Minority Welfare Office at Madhepura quoted that same condition back to college principals in its own words, tying it to institutions inside Madhepura district (hostel publicity circular, District Minority Welfare Office, Madhepura).

The communities the department works for are Muslim, Sikh, Christian, Jain, Buddhist and Parsi, alongside linguistic minorities (Minority Welfare Department, Government of Bihar). Bihar nativity is stated as a condition on the scheme's national record, which does not sit comfortably with a portal screen that asks only where you study (Mukhyamantri Alpsankhyak Chhatravas Yojana, myScheme). A student from outside Bihar studying in a Bihar college is the case those two documents answer differently, and it is a case for the district officer rather than for a form.

What the department does not test is money. No income ceiling appears in the admission guidelines, and the registration screen has no income field at all: it collects name, parents' names, date of birth, gender, category, Aadhaar, email and mobile, with category recorded as General, OBC, EBC or Other for verification (registration, hostel admission portal, archived May 2026). Nor is there any written requirement that the student's home be far from the college.

Who cannot apply

Exclusions

No disqualifying list is printed anywhere in the admission material, and the two positive tests do all the work: a student outside the notified communities, or studying in a district other than the one applied to, has nothing to file. The nearest thing to a bar is written into the undertaking a parent signs at admission, which reserves disciplinary action for false information or misconduct (undertaking format, Minority Welfare Department, archived June 2024).

Continuation

Renewal conditions

Residence is bounded by the student's own exam calendar rather than by an annual form. The undertaking commits the resident to vacate the hostel within one week of the date of the last final examination (undertaking format, Minority Welfare Department, archived June 2024). A student returning for a further course therefore comes back through the same admission route, since the department publishes no continuation or renewal procedure of any kind.

What you get

Award & benefits

The grant is Rs 1,000 a month for a student living in a departmental minority hostel, and that rate appears identically on the department's district pages and on its e-Kalyan portal (Minority Welfare, Saran district administration, e-Kalyan, Minority Welfare Department, Bihar, archived August 2026). The application collects the student's savings bank account name, number and IFSC code, which is the channel the money moves through (hostel admission portal, Minority Welfare Department, archived August 2026).

Grain is separate from cash and arrives as grain. A resident draws 9 kg of rice and 6 kg of wheat in the month, and the department also puts a cot, a mattress, bed sheets, a table and chair to study at, cooking utensils and a kitchen behind the seat (Minority Welfare, Saran district administration). Utensils and a kitchen alongside a raw-grain entitlement describe a hostel where residents cook, not one that serves a mess meal, which is worth knowing before a first-year student packs. No hostel fee or deposit appears anywhere in the department's application material.

The seat itself is the larger benefit, and this is where it sits. The figures below are the sanctioned strength printed in the department's list as it stood in June 2024.

The department circulates that file under a name promising vacant seats, but the column it actually prints is headed total number of seats, and two districts have since published smaller figures for buildings the list rates at 100 (Hostel List, Minority Welfare Department, Bihar, archived June 2024). Saran puts the Hazrat Shah Peer Nazar hostel at Nabiganj, Chhapra at a capacity of 60 with 20 children accommodated, measured on 28 July 2023 (Minority Welfare, Saran district administration). Nawada, advertising for a superintendent in May 2026, described its Rasool Nagar building as a 60-bed hostel (hostel superintendent advertisement, District Minority Welfare Office, Nawada). The list is not wrong everywhere, though: Madhepura's own circular to college principals describes all three of its buildings at the same strength the state list gives them (hostel publicity circular, District Minority Welfare Office, Madhepura). Treat the table as what the state sanctioned, and ask the district what it can actually let.

• Under this scheme, students from minority communities who are studying and residing in hostels run by the Minority Welfare Department, Government of Bihar, will receive the following benefits:
• A monthly stipend of ₹1,000/-.
• Provision of essential facilities such as cots, mattresses, bed sheets, tables, chairs for studying, as well as cooking utensils and kitchen facilities.
• Monthly distribution of 9 kg of rice and 6 kg of wheat to each student.

What to prepare

Documents required

The upload rules are stricter than most state portals and are the usual reason a form stalls. Certificates go up as PDF at 200 DPI within 500 KB each: the matric certificate carrying the date of birth, the Class 10 marksheet, the marksheet of the last examination passed, Aadhaar, and proof of admission at the institution. Photographs go up as JPG at 3.5 cm by 4.5 cm, again within 500 KB, and the scanned signature at 3.5 cm by 1.5 cm (hostel admission portal, Minority Welfare Department, archived August 2026).

Three photographs are asked for, not one: the candidate, the father, and the visitor or visitors, which is the department recording in advance who may come to see the resident.

The recommendation letter is a fixed proforma the institution fills in and seals, and it asks for the board or university, the institution's name, address and contact number, the applicant's roll number, the parent's name, the district of residence, the course, the class or session, and the date of admission, under the signature of the Principal or head of department (recommendation letter format, Minority Welfare Department, archived August 2026). Everything uploaded has to be produced in original at the time of admission, with the bank passbook signed and stamped by the bank, and a passport photograph carrying the name and application ID on its back.

One divergence to carry to the counter: the national scheme record adds a caste or community certificate and an address proof to the list, neither of which the portal's own upload page asks for (Mukhyamantri Alpsankhyak Chhatravas Yojana, myScheme). They cost nothing to carry and a missing community certificate is an expensive thing to discover at a verification desk.

Step by step

How to apply

Take the routing question first, because the department publishes more than one address and they do not all work. The Madhepura office told principals to apply online at the department's citizen page on state.bihar.gov.in or at ekalyan.bih.nic.in, and printed the same toll-free line the portal carried, 1800 345 6123 (hostel publicity circular, District Minority Welfare Office, Madhepura, hostel admission portal, Minority Welfare Department, archived August 2026). Of those, only the state.bihar.gov.in page answered when we tried it in September 2026. The e-Kalyan addresses did not, so an applicant who cannot load a form should treat that as the portal's condition rather than their own browser's, and go to the district office.

What the form asked for, when it was reachable, is worth knowing in advance. Registration came before the form: the portal validated the Aadhaar number against the server, then sent one code to the email address and another by SMS to the mobile number, and the name and date of birth had to match Aadhaar exactly, with no Mr, Ms or Shri in front (process flow, hostel application form, archived August 2026).

The form itself ran through Basic Information, Personal Details, Academic Details and Other Details before a final check page, and each tab could be saved as a draft, so it did not have to be finished in one sitting. At the academic stage the applicant picked the district being applied to, and inside that district more than one hostel could be selected on the same application. Once the final submission box was ticked, the form could not be edited (process flow, hostel application form, archived August 2026).

There was a way back before the deadline, and it cost the application number. A submitted application could be cancelled and a fresh one filed before the last date; the new application overrode the old one and was issued a different number, so any acknowledgement quoting the earlier number stopped being the live record (hostel admission portal, Minority Welfare Department, archived August 2026).

The offline half of the process is not an alternative to the online form; it feeds it. District minority welfare offices write to college principals asking them to publicise the hostels to minority students, and the Madhepura office's 2024 circular went out to eleven named colleges and to every other principal in the district, setting out its two boys' hostels and its girls' hostel by name (hostel publicity circular, District Minority Welfare Office, Madhepura). The principal's part of the job then shows up inside the online application as the signed recommendation.

After the Form Is Submitted

Applicant Login on the portal was the only status view the department ever offered, and there is no separate tracking page and no SMS status service to fall back on. With the portal not answering, tracking is a telephone matter. The portal named the District Minority Welfare Officer of the applicant's district as the point of contact for exactly this, alongside a helpline on 1800 345 6123 and technical support at min-welfare-bih@nic.in (hostel admission portal, Minority Welfare Department, archived August 2026). Each district's officer is listed with a departmental mobile number, and that number is attached to the post rather than to the person: the officer Madhepura's 2024 circular is signed by is not the one the roster of the same year names for the district, yet the number against it is unchanged (List of DMWO, Minority Welfare Department, archived June 2024, hostel publicity circular, District Minority Welfare Office, Madhepura). So an old circular is still a usable phone number.

How winners are picked

Selection process

Nothing the department publishes sets a rank, a qualifying mark or a quota for these seats, so there is no cutoff to compare yourself against and no reserved share to count on. What the record shows instead is who holds the decision, and it is held locally. Each building runs under an operating committee chaired by the district's Deputy Development Commissioner, and the superintendent who admits students to it is a serving teacher, appointed by advertisement rather than posted in: Nawada invited applications for its hostel in May 2026 from minority-community lecturers and teachers at the district's constituent colleges and higher secondary schools, to hold the charge on top of their teaching duties, and took the forms by hand or by post at the District Minority Welfare Office (hostel superintendent advertisement, District Minority Welfare Office, Nawada). That advertisement names enrolment in the hostel as the superintendent's first listed duty, ahead of discipline and upkeep, which tells an applicant whose desk their case lands on.

Verification is the visible filter. Originals of every uploaded document are checked at admission, and the parent or guardian signs the undertaking there, so an application that clears a portal still has a counter to pass.

Fine print

Terms & conditions

The undertaking is short and it is the one document that sets out how a resident is expected to behave. The parent or guardian certifies that the details filed are true, that the student will abide by the hostel's rules, and that the student will leave within a week of the last final examination, and it accepts that false information or misconduct may draw disciplinary action (undertaking format, Minority Welfare Department, archived June 2024). Both the candidate and the parent sign it, with the parent's contact number, and it is handed over at admission rather than uploaded with the form.

Get help

Contact

The District Minority Welfare Officer is the working counter for this scheme and, with the portal unreachable, the only one. There is an officer for each of Bihar's districts, listed by name with a departmental mobile number (List of DMWO, Minority Welfare Department, archived June 2024). The helpline the department printed on both its portal and its district circulars is 1800 345 6123, and its support address is min-welfare-bih@nic.in (hostel admission portal, Minority Welfare Department, archived August 2026).

The department itself sits on the first floor of the Annexe Building, Block-4, Main (old) Secretariat, Patna-800015, was set up in 1991, and publishes its Secretary's line as 0612-2217745 (Minority Welfare Department, Government of Bihar). That page is live, which the application portal it links to is not.

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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