NEC Stipend And Book Grant Scheme(NSBGS)

Overview

About NSBGS

The Directorate of Higher Education in Kohima carries this award under two names, and the gap between them is the first thing a Nagaland student needs to see. Its scholarship page lists the NEC Stipend and Book Grant under the NEC plan scheme "Financial support to Students of North Eastern Region for Higher Professional courses", funded by NEC, Shillong (Scholarship, Directorate of Higher Education, Nagaland). Its Nagaland Scholarship Nodal Cell table carries that same scheme as "Financial support to the students of NER for higher professional courses (NEC Merit Scholarship-Discontinued)", marked renewal only from 2026 and handled by the Directorate's own NEC nodal officer (Nagaland Scholarship Nodal Cell, Directorate of Higher Education).

So there is one scheme here, not two. The money is the North Eastern Council's, released under the Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region, and Nagaland's role is to advertise it, verify applicants and answer for them. The state does not set the rate or the number of awards.

The name is literal rather than decorative. Before the present rules, this award was an NEC stipend paid every month with a book grant added once a year, governed by rules the North Eastern Council Secretariat in Shillong issued from 2004-05 for the same scheme and left the North Eastern states to operate from a fund NEC released to them (NEC Rules for Stipend and Book Grant, in A Handbook of Scholarship Schemes, Government of Meghalaya). That is why Nagaland's Directorate carried the scheme as one of its own, with conditions it wrote itself, and the page holding that text is stamped last updated 9 July 2017 (Scholarship, Directorate of Higher Education, Nagaland).

Scale is small next to the Directorate's other awards. In 2015-16 the Directorate recorded 177 students awarded under the NEC Stipend and Book Grant, against Rs 21,88,800 actually utilised, in a year when its post-matric ST scholarship reached 43,634 students (Scholarship, Directorate of Higher Education, Nagaland).

Who runs it

Provider

At a glance

Key details

Calendar

Important dates

There is no permanent calendar for this scheme. The rules put the announcement in the hands of the state department or NEC, through newspaper advertisements, department websites and a notice on the portal, which means the window is published each cycle rather than fixed (Rules for Award of NEC Merit Scholarship).

Nagaland's published timeline for the 2025 cycle gives the shape to expect (Scholarship Timeline, Directorate of Higher Education, Nagaland).

The Directorate's timeline notification for the 2026-27 session, issued in June 2026, sets dates for the post-matric ST scholarship on the National Scholarship Portal and for the State Merit and Research scholarships on the Common Scholarship Portal, and carries no entry for the NEC scheme (Timeline for scholarship schemes 2026-27, Directorate of Higher Education, Nagaland). That silence matches the renewal-only status on its nodal cell page (Nagaland Scholarship Nodal Cell, Directorate of Higher Education).

Who can apply

Eligibility criteria

Two tests sit ahead of the marksheet, and both are settled on paper. The rules in force open the scholarship only to a permanent resident of a North Eastern state, and cap the parent or guardian's annual income from all sources at Rs 8.0 lakh, proved by an income certificate from the competent authority (Rules for Award of NEC Merit Scholarship). The Directorate's nodal cell table repeats the same Rs 8 lakh ceiling for Nagaland applicants.

On marks, the rules ask for a minimum of 60 per cent in aggregate in the qualifying examination at every level: HSLC or HSSLC for a diploma, HSSLC for a degree, a degree in any discipline for post-graduate study, and a post-graduate degree for M.Phil or PhD registration. They also add a timing rule students often miss. A candidate is considered only in the year the course begins, and every later year of that course is a renewal rather than a fresh application.

Where the two Nagaland documents differ, the reason is chronological. The Directorate's scheme list, last updated on 9 July 2017, records a category split of 60 per cent in the last qualifying examination for Scheduled Tribe applicants and 75 per cent for General category applicants (Scholarship, Directorate of Higher Education, Nagaland). Nagaland was setting those bars well above the regional floor of the day, since the older NEC rules asked only 55 per cent from General, OBC and MOBC candidates and 50 per cent from SC and ST candidates (NEC Rules for Stipend and Book Grant, in A Handbook of Scholarship Schemes, Government of Meghalaya). The NEC rules that came into force from the 2020-21 financial year state that they supersede the previous rules on this scheme, apply one 60 per cent bar across levels, and provide for no reservation or quota on the basis of category, religion or gender.

Who cannot apply

Exclusions

The scheme record published on myScheme carries no exclusion list, so the disqualifications live in the rules instead. A student already receiving a scholarship or financial assistance from any other source cannot draw this one at the same time, and a sponsored candidate in full employment or a working or in-service candidate is not eligible at all (Rules for Award of NEC Merit Scholarship). The award does not cover an internship or a practical training stint, and no extension beyond the prescribed period of the course is entertained.

That first bar tightened when the rules changed. The older NEC rules for the stipend and book grant let a holder keep a National or State Merit Scholarship alongside, and barred only other assistance (NEC Rules for Stipend and Book Grant, in A Handbook of Scholarship Schemes, Government of Meghalaya); the rules a Nagaland beneficiary renews under today allow no second award of any kind.

One exclusion is administrative and catches students who did nothing wrong. If the institution where a candidate studies has not registered itself on the National Scholarship Portal using its AISHE, UDISE or NCVT code, the application cannot be verified there, and an unverified application is not considered for the scholarship.

Continuation

Renewal conditions

Renewal is the part of this scheme that still matters in Nagaland, since the Directorate now lists it as open for renewal cases only. It is annual and it is not automatic. Every existing beneficiary has to fill a renewal form on the portal each year of the course and upload the previous year's marksheet or pass certificate, and an M.Phil or PhD scholar has to attach a current progress report from the research guide, countersigned by the institute's Registrar (Rules for Award of NEC Merit Scholarship).

The academic test is promotion rather than a fresh merit contest. A student who passes, or is promoted with no backlog carried for more than a year, stays on. A student not promoted, or holding a backlog paper for longer than a year, loses the scholarship for the rest of the course, and the institute's verifying officer is the one expected to catch that before an application moves forward.

Three renewal traps are worth knowing before they happen. Any break in the scholarship during the course period ends it permanently for that course, with no option to reapply as a renewal later. A student who changes the subject of study loses the renewal if the scholarship was already drawn for the earlier course. A student who changes institutions loses it too. The one carve-out is medical: a beneficiary who stops studying on medical advice may send a certificate from the District Medical Officer or the Joint Director of State Health Services, along with documents from the institute, to the Director (HRD and E) at the NEC Secretariat for the break to be considered.

What you get

Award & benefits

The scheme pays a single annual amount fixed by level of study, not by category or by state.

Those rates are the current ones, confirmed by the Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha (NEC Scholarships to students of the North-East, Press Information Bureau). The same reply records that disbursement moved to the DBT route from 2021-22, and that the switch caused delays before it settled.

What the scheme's name still describes paid on a different pattern, a monthly stipend with the book grant added separately once a year.

Those rates were revised over the life of the older scheme, and Assam's higher education department still publishes a higher set for the same award, running from Rs 900 to Rs 1500 a month with a book grant of Rs 1000 to Rs 3000 a year (NEC Merit Scholarship and Book Grant, Higher Education Department, Assam). Nagaland's own scholarship rate card covers the post-matric ST, State Merit and State Research schemes and carries no line for the NEC award, which is consistent with NEC rather than the state fixing what it pays (Scholarship Rates, Directorate of Higher Education, Nagaland).

Tenure follows the course. An award runs for the prescribed duration of the course subject to renewal, with no extension beyond that period, and the M.Phil award runs 2 years against 3 years for a PhD (Rules for Award of NEC Merit Scholarship). Entitlement starts from the date of admission, or from the date of registration for M.Phil and PhD scholars, whichever is later. The scholarship is for study in India.

• The selection of the students will mainly depend upon their academic performance and the need for the scholarship.
• The selected students will receive stipends and book grants for studies in India only.

What to prepare

Documents required

The Directorate's own document list is the older offline set, built around attested photocopies routed through the college. The portal-era list is shorter and stricter about who issues what (Rules for Award of NEC Merit Scholarship).

The Permanent Residential Certificate is mandatory and will only be accepted from a Deputy Commissioner, an Additional Deputy Commissioner or a sub-divisional officer of a civil sub-division. A certificate from any other authority is refused outright, which is the single most avoidable rejection on this scheme. The income certificate from the competent authority is mandatory, as are the details of the qualifying examination. M.Phil and PhD applicants must add a synopsis signed by the project guide, the Director (Research), or another official the institute or university authorises. A bank passbook is listed as optional, but the account itself is not: it has to be in the applicant's own name.

Step by step

How to apply

Check which portal you are being sent to before you register anywhere. The Directorate's current scheme table assigns the NEC scholarship to the National Scholarship Portal at scholarships.gov.in, and reserves the Nagaland Common Scholarship Portal for the State Merit and State Research scholarships (Scholarship Schemes, Directorate of Higher Education, Nagaland). The myScheme record for this scheme still points at the state portal's registration page, so a student who follows that link registers on the wrong system for this award.

The application itself is filled on the portal within the advertised window, and may also be filed through the NSP or UMANG mobile apps (Rules for Award of NEC Merit Scholarship). Verification then runs at two levels: the institute's nodal officer checks eligibility and can accept, reject, mark the application defective or return it for correction, after which the nodal officer nominated by the applicant's home state government verifies it again. The rules press applicants to file at the earliest, on the reasoning that an early application leaves room to correct or update it if the verifying authority asks.

Tracking splits the way the money does, and the Directorate keeps both halves on one page. Its scholarship information page carries a standing link to check payment status on the PFMS portal, a check on whether the student's bank account is enabled for DBT, and an Aadhaar seeding tutorial, none of which report on the application itself (Scholarship Information, Directorate of Higher Education, Nagaland). For the application, the verification stages above are what move, and the institute and state nodal officers are the ones who can say where a form is stuck. What is specific to the NEC award is where responsibility stops: NEC pays selected students directly into their verified bank accounts by DBT, the account must stay operational for the whole tenure and is preferably linked to the applicant's Aadhaar, and the rules state that NEC will not be answerable if the amount fails to credit because of a payment failure at the bank's end (Rules for Award of NEC Merit Scholarship).

How winners are picked

Selection process

Selection is a marks ranking against a fixed state quota, not a discretionary shortlist. The merit list is drawn from finally verified applications on the basis of marks in the qualifying examination alone, a tie goes to the candidate with the lower family income, and no seats are set aside by category, religion or gender (Rules for Award of NEC Merit Scholarship). M.Phil and PhD candidates are judged differently, on whether the research topic is directly and currently relevant to problems of the North Eastern Region, with basic and theoretical research not generally favoured. That flat merit rule is itself a change: under the older stipend and book grant rules, states were told to make the selection on merit subject to their quota with reservation for SC, ST and OBC candidates dovetailed into the distribution across courses (NEC Rules for Stipend and Book Grant, in A Handbook of Scholarship Schemes, Government of Meghalaya).

Nagaland's share of fresh awards is set in the rules themselves.

Quota unfilled for want of eligible candidates in one state can be passed to students from other North Eastern states on inter se merit, and NEC may raise or lower the totals depending on the budget available. What the quota promises and what the scheme delivers have been some distance apart. Across 2020-21 to 2022-23 the scheme received 27,726 applications from the region and selected 4,756 candidates, of whom 93 were from Nagaland: 50 at graduate level, 40 at post-graduate, 2 in M.Phil or PhD and 1 in a diploma (NEC Scholarships to students of the North-East, Press Information Bureau). On paper Nagaland's line in the allotment table carries 192 fresh awards for a single year (Rules for Award of NEC Merit Scholarship).

Fine print

Terms & conditions

The rates are not permanent. They are subject to revision from time to time by a committee the Secretary, NEC appoints for the purpose, and the list of courses for which NEC assistance is admissible is decided by NEC in view of the specialised manpower the region needs (Rules for Award of NEC Merit Scholarship). The number of scholarships may also move up or down with the budget, though the split between states stays on the normative allocation.

Two conditions bear on students who were already on the scheme when the current rules arrived. Beneficiaries drawing the scholarship before these rules took effect continue on the earlier procedure until their tenure ends, and renewal requests belonging to the 2019-20 academic year and earlier are processed the old way, with the state government disbursing directly into student accounts (Rules for Award of NEC Merit Scholarship).

Get help

Contact

The Directorate of Higher Education runs the scheme from Below New Secretariat, Kohima-797001, and publishes hescholarship@gmail.com and 9863772522 for its scholarship section (Contact, Directorate of Higher Education, Nagaland).

For this scheme specifically, the Directorate names Shri Tol Pucho, Assistant Director, on 7005405552 as the departmental nodal officer (Nagaland Scholarship Nodal Cell, Directorate of Higher Education). Questions about the rules themselves go above the state, to the Director (HRD and E), North Eastern Council Secretariat, Shillong 793003, on 03642522674 (Rules for Award of NEC Merit Scholarship).

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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