PM-YASASVI: Top Class College Education for OBC, EBC and DNT Students(PM-YASASVI:TCCEOBCEBCDNTS)

Overview

About PM-YASASVI:TCCEOBCEBCDNTS

In 2023-24 the college arm of PM-YASASVI carried Rs 111.18 crore for 4,762 students, on the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment's own briefing of 23 October 2024. Read that headcount the way the scheme works and it explains the whole design: the income limit and the caste certificate put you in the queue, and the number of scholarship slots your institute has been allotted decides who is actually paid.

This is the college-stage component of PM-YASASVI, run as a Central Sector Scheme that the scheme guidelines say the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment funds on a 100% basis. It covers OBC, EBC and DNT students studying beyond class XII, and only at institutions the Ministry has notified for that financial year. The ministry's October 2024 briefing puts the FY 2023-24 figure for the college component at Rs 111.18 crore for 4,762 students, against Rs 6.55 crore for 2,602 students in the school-education component of the same umbrella. Those two lines are the clearest measure of how narrow the college award is and how much each selected student receives.

What separates it from the rest of the umbrella is the size of the award. Where the post-matric arm pays a graded academic allowance and reached 27.97 lakh students in that year on the same briefing, this one clears the tuition bill outright and then adds a monthly living amount, a books allowance and a one-time computer grant. The trade is that it is rationed institution by institution rather than opened to everyone who clears the income test.

Who runs it

Provider

At a glance

Key details

Calendar

Important dates

The guidelines fix one standing date, 31st October every year as the last date for institutions to verify student applications on NSP, or whatever date the DBT Mission decides with the stakeholder ministries. The portal then publishes the actual calendar for each academic year, and for 2026-27 it reads as below.

Note the shape of it. Your deadline and the institute's are not the same day, and the two verification rounds after yours are where an application that missed a document quietly dies.

Who can apply

Eligibility criteria

Three things have to be true at once, and the third is the one students miss. Your total annual family income from all sources must be up to Rs 2.50 lakh, you must hold a valid OBC, EBC or DNT certificate, and you must already have secured admission in a full-time prescribed course at a notified institution through that institution's normal admission process, as the scheme guidelines set it out. Meeting all three still only makes you eligible up to the number of slots allotted to your institution for that course.

Which institutions count is a defined list rather than a reputation test. The IIMs, IITs, IIITs, AIIMS, NITs, NIFTs, NIDs, the Indian Institutes of Hotel Management, the National Law Universities and other Central Government institutions can be included, but only after they apply for empanelment or the Selection Committee recommends them. An institution outside those categories qualifies on one of three grounds the guidelines list: NAAC A++ or A+ accreditation, a place among the Top 100 National Institutional Ranking Framework institutions, or status as an Institution of National Importance on the Ministry of Education's lists. For Commercial Pilot Training and Type Rating courses, government institutes approved by the Director General of Civil Aviation are the eligible set. An institution that does not apply under the scheme for three years running is dropped from the notified list.

Two family-level rules bind as well. No more than two siblings in one family can hold the scholarship, and the student files an affidavit with the institution certifying that he or she is not the third sibling drawing the benefit. Because the funds are majorly earmarked for OBC, the guidelines direct preference to OBC students when the scheme is being considered.

Who cannot apply

Exclusions

Neither the guidelines nor the myScheme record publishes a disqualification list for this component, so the practical exclusions come from two other places. The portal's own rule is one: the National Scholarship Portal lists this component as a merit based scheme, and from AY 2026-27 a student may apply for one merit based scholarship scheme and one or more welfare based schemes, which puts every other merit based central scholarship out of reach in the same year. The scheme's own rules supply the rest, and both bite after selection rather than before it: the third sibling in a family is barred, and the scholarship is terminated outright if the student fails to get promoted to the next semester or class.

Continuation

Renewal conditions

Renewal is not automatic and it is not silent. The award runs till the course is completed subject to satisfactory performance, but the student has to file a fresh application on the portal every single year, renewal years included. When your institution verifies a renewal application, that verification is the institution certifying two things at once: that it has promoted you to the next class and that you have taken admission in it.

The laptop head has its own renewal-year paperwork, set out in the PM-YASASVI umbrella guidelines rather than in the college document. The computer should normally be bought in the first year the scholarship is awarded, and the purchase bill goes to the institution when you apply the following year. If the machine cost less than the amount released under that head, the institution adjusts the difference against the grant it next proposes for you on the portal.

If your institution is de-notified while you are studying, students already admitted under the scheme keep the scholarship till the course ends if otherwise eligible. What stops is fresh intake: no new seats are allotted and no further funds released to that institution.

What you get

Award & benefits

The award is a package of four heads rather than a single stipend, and the fee head is uncapped for government institutions.

Payment starts as soon as the student has secured admission and begun attending classes, and every head moves by Direct Benefit Transfer. Where the money lands has changed, and both versions are still in circulation, so it is worth knowing which document you are reading. The PM-YASASVI umbrella guidelines send the tuition fee and non-refundable charges straight to the institution and the living, books and computer heads straight to the student. The college guidelines as amended from 2023-24 route the fee head through the student's own account as well, and add a deadline to match: the student deposits it with the institute immediately and in any case within a month of receipt, the institute has to confirm the fee was remitted inside that month, and it is free to take remedial action against defaulters to recover its dues from the scholarship. Check with your institution's scholarship cell which route it is following for your year before you spend anything that arrives.

• The OBC/EBC/DNT students, who secure admission in the notified institutions, will be awarded scholarships to meet the requirements for:-
• Full tuition fee and non-refundable charges (there will be a ceiling of ₹2.00 lakhs per annum per student for private sector institutions and ₹3.72 lakhs per annum per student for the private sector flying clubs for Commercial Pilot Training and Type Rating Courses)
• Living expenses to the beneficiary @₹3,000/-per month per student
• Books and stationery @ ₹5,000/- per annum per student
• A latest computer/laptop of a reputed brand with accessories like UPS and printer limited to ₹45,000/- per student as one-time assistance during the course.
• Note 01: The scholarship will become payable immediately after a student has secured admission and has started attending the classes.
• Note 02: The payment of tuition fees and other non-refundable charges will be made directly to the institution by the Central Government through Direct Benefit Transfer mode.
• Note 03: Similarly, the payment of living expenses, books & stationery, and computer/laptop with accessories will be made directly to the student by the Central Government through Direct Benefit Transfer mode.

What to prepare

Documents required

The upload set is ordinary, so the useful detail is what happens to it afterwards. Beyond the income and caste certificates, you upload bank account details, your admission rank and the fee details you are claiming against, and the institution verifies all of it before forwarding your application to the Ministry.

The institute's call on caste, annual family income, educational qualification and rank is final for the Ministry, and no second scrutiny of those documents is undertaken. What the Ministry keeps is a random check of income certificates, and if a student is later found to have been ineligible on those grounds, the institution is held responsible and may be asked to refund the loss. Students with disabilities have an extra step that is portal-wide rather than scheme-specific: log in to the UDID portal and give consent to share UDID details first, or the application cannot be submitted.

Step by step

How to apply

Applications are filed by the student on the National Scholarship Portal, not through the college office, and the college's role begins only after you submit. Start with One Time Registration on NSP, which runs on Aadhaar face authentication through the NSP OTR app, then fill the scholarship application under the Department of Social Justice and Empowerment (Backward Classes) heading. If you would rather not do it yourself, NSP services are available at Common Service Centres at a fixed total charge of Rs 30 per candidate covering the reference number, biometric authentication, OTR generation and the full application form.

Your institution then verifies applications on NSP for submission to the Ministry, and it is bound to verify only as many applications as it has slots. That is why a correctly filled application can still sit unverified.

Two tracking routes exist once you have applied, and they answer different questions. Application Status sits behind the student login on scholarships.gov.in and tells you where the application has reached. Money is tracked separately on PFMS Know Your Payment, which asks for your bank name, your account number and a word verification, and reports the payment status against that account.

How winners are picked

Selection process

Merit here is not a fresh test. For first-year entrants the institution ranks eligible OBC, EBC and DNT students on the merit list of the entrance examination that got them admitted, from the list at Annexure-I of the guidelines.

When eligible admissions exceed slots, the scholarship goes to the top students on that inter-se merit list, and a tie for the last slot is broken in favour of the student with the lower family income. Slots that the first year cannot fill are offered to students in the second, third and fourth years on the inter-se merit of the previous year's result, with priority to those who have more years of the course left. Thirty per cent of an institution's slots are reserved for eligible girl students on their inter-se merit, and girls who already made the overall merit list are not counted inside that 30 per cent; where there are not enough girl candidates, those slots move to boys on merit.

The arithmetic is easier to see on one real allotment. IIIT Dharwad published 52 slots for 2026-27 and split them as follows.

Fine print

Terms & conditions

The obligations that follow selection sit mostly with the institution, which is useful to know when something goes wrong. It has to carry the scheme's salient features in its prospectus and on its website, monitor the performance of every student covered and report it to the Ministry at the end of each academic year, and furnish a utilisation certificate in the prescribed format for the tuition fee and non-refundable charges released to it, an obligation the umbrella guidelines carry. An institution that violates the scheme's provisions or the instructions issued by the Government of India is de-notified.

Slot distribution is not the institution's call either. A Steering Committee chaired by the Secretary, Social Justice and Empowerment, with members from the Ministry of Tribal Affairs, the Departments of Higher Education and Medical Education, the Ministry of Civil Aviation, the UGC and NITI Aayog, distributes the slots among notified institutions and can recommend adding or dropping an institution on performance.

Get help

Contact

The scheme is listed on NSP under the Department of Social Justice and Empowerment (Backward Classes), and portal problems go to the portal, not the Ministry. The NSP helpdesk answers on helpdesk@nsp.gov.in and 0120 6619540, and the PFMS helpdesk on helpdesk-pfms@gov.in and the toll free number 1800 118 111; both run 8 am to 8 pm on all days except government holidays. A formal complaint goes through Grievance Registration on NSP, and scheme-wise and district-wise nodal officer lists are published on the portal for escalation.

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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