Post-Matric Scholarship for OBC, EBC and DNT Students - DNH & DD(POSTMSOBC&EBC)

The window that governs a student here is the one on the portal, not the calendar in the guidelines. For the current academic year the UT's schemes opened on 29-07-2026 and student applications close on 31-10-2026 (National Scholarship Portal, scheme list for the UT).

The guidelines set a different rhythm, which explains the mismatch a student may notice between an old circular and the live portal. There, administrations announce the scheme from April, registration opens on 1 April and closes on 30 June, institutions verify by 31 July, the administration verifies by 15 August, central assistance is released by 31 August and payment is expected before 30 September (scheme guidelines). Both are real: the guidelines' calendar is what the ministry asks administrations to follow as far as possible, while the dates on the portal are the ones this UT is actually operating to, and they open after the guidelines' window has already shut. Plan around the portal, and treat the guidelines' calendar as the schedule for the money moving between governments rather than a deadline for you. Registration for the Freeship Card is the exception at both ends: the portals are meant to stay open for it all year.

Domicile decides more applications than category does. The award is made by the state or union territory a student permanently belongs to, so a student settled in the UT studying at a college in Gujarat or Maharashtra still files with this administration, while a student from elsewhere at a college in Silvassa files with their own home administration (scheme guidelines). The UT's own notice states the same rule in a line for anyone unsure which counter to approach (UT Social Welfare Department notice, post-matric EBC).

One figure governs all three categories. Rs 2.50 lakh a year is the ceiling the guidelines apply in both directions, on the parents' or guardians' income from all sources where the student is not working and on that income plus the student's own where they are, and the UT's notice repeats the same number for its EBC route, with nothing lower for one community and nothing higher for another (scheme guidelines; UT notice). Where the three categories differ is only in the notification that names your community, and the record published for this territory narrows that to communities notified by the UT administration itself.

The college has to be on the portal before the student can be. The territory's scholarship notice is blunt about the sequence: only an institution holding a valid AISHE or UDISE code can register on the National Scholarship Portal, that registration has to be verified by the district or state nodal officer, and until it is, the institution cannot verify a single student's application online (UT Social Welfare Department notice for 2023-24). Accreditation is the second gate on the institution: higher education institutions were told to obtain NAAC or NBA accreditation before 2024 in order to continue in the scheme from 2025-26 onwards (scheme guidelines).

A rule that catches students late is the one about sideways moves, and it is not on the scheme record. Studying at the same stage again in a different subject disqualifies you, so a B.Sc after a B.A, or an M.A in a second subject after an M.A, is out; so is an LLB begun after finishing a B.Ed or a B.T (scheme guidelines).

myScheme publishes nothing at all under exclusions for this scheme, so every bar that matters has to be read out of the guidelines and the territory's own notice.

What most often disqualifies an otherwise eligible student is how the seat was obtained. Fees claimed against a management quota seat or a spot admission are not reimbursed, and before releasing anything the administration is entitled to satisfy itself that the applicant came through an advertised, ranked and published selection and that the course fee was fixed by a fee fixation committee (scheme guidelines). A merit-list seat at a private professional college is inside the scheme; the same student at the same college on a discretionary seat is outside it.

Locally the sharpest bar is on holding more than one award. The UT notice tells students plainly that they are eligible for only one scholarship out of all the central scholarships available for SC, ST, OBC, EBC, disability and minority students (UT Social Welfare Department notice for 2023-24). The guidelines add the mechanics: a scholar awarded a second scholarship or stipend must choose the more favourable one in writing through the head of the institution, and this one stops from the date the other is accepted.

Two narrower stoppages apply while an award is running. An MBBS student already drawing remuneration through internship or housemanship, or a student paid a stipend during practical training in any other course, is not paid for that stretch. And a scholar being coached at a government-funded pre-examination training centre cannot draw the coaching stipend for the duration of that programme (scheme guidelines).

There is no renewal form to fill. The award runs to the end of the course and the portal renews it on the institution's confirmation that the student was promoted and rejoined the same course, provided attendance of 75% has been kept in every academic year and verified through the Aadhaar-based attendance system (scheme guidelines). What a renewing student in this territory does have to do is go back through the same institutional route as a fresh applicant: the UT notice invites fresh and renewal applications together, through the principal or head master, and the portal carries a separate Renewal Application option for the year (UT Social Welfare Department notice for 2023-24). Aadhaar authentication becomes compulsory at renewal if it was skipped at admission, and a Freeship Card issued once is valid for the rest of the course, so no fresh card is registered for.

Failing is not automatically fatal, and the rule bends once for the most expensive courses. A first failure in a Group 1 professional course still permits renewal; from the second failure, in any class, the student pays their own way until a promotion comes through. Repeating a class as a regular student stretches the award by the shorter of one extra year and the actual repeat period. Missing the annual examination through illness is not counted as failure at all, on a medical certificate from the prescribed authority that the college accepts (scheme guidelines).

Renewals also have first call on the money. Central assistance released to the UT has to cover students already awarded scholarships in earlier years before any of it reaches new applicants, which is the quiet reason a fresh application can sit approved and unpaid in a year when the notional allocation is tight.

The amount turns on the course group and nothing else. There is no hosteller rate and no day scholar rate anywhere in this schedule, and the distinction survives only in the confirmation a college gives at renewal and in the rule that treats CA, ICWA, CS and ICFA candidates as day scholars for the academic allowance.

Anyone comparing this against an older UT circular will find fewer heads of payment than the territory once advertised. The 2021 notice for the post-matric EBC route offered a maintenance allowance, reader charges for blind students, reimbursement of compulsory non-refundable fees, study tour charges, and a book allowance with thesis typing and printing charges (UT Social Welfare Department notice). The schedule that governs an application today has two components and no separate heads.

A student on a correspondence or online course through a central or state university is eligible for the tuition component only; the academic allowance is not paid to them. Everything sanctioned reaches the student's own bank account by direct benefit transfer, preferably through the Aadhaar Payment Bridge, and a state or UT administration is free to top up the academic allowance from its own budget.

The guidelines also ring-fence parts of the outlay before the first application is read: 30% of allocated funds for girl students, 5% for students with disabilities, and at least 25% of the total outlay for Group 4 courses, the class XI, class XII, ITI and polytechnic band (scheme guidelines). For a student in Diu weighing a three-year polytechnic diploma against a degree, that last earmark works in their favour.

The certificate that trips students here is issued differently in the two halves of the territory. In Dadra & Nagar Haveli the income certificate comes from the Mamlatdar. In Daman and Diu it may be issued by the secretary of the concerned panchayat once attested by the sarpanch and countersigned by the block development officer, or equally by the Mamlatdar. The domicile certificate is issued by the Mamlatdar throughout, and so is the OBC or EBC community certificate (UT Social Welfare Department notice; UT notice for 2023-24).

Three practical instructions come from the territory rather than the central rulebook: compulsory documents are to be uploaded in original only, a student with a disability needs a UDID number and should apply for one if they do not have it, and a student without an Aadhaar number may register on an enrolment ID and is given 30 days to obtain the Aadhaar and update it on the portal. Where the applicant is under 18 and has no Aadhaar, the parent or legal guardian's Aadhaar is required and the minor holds a joint bank account seeded to it (UT notice for 2023-24).

One income certificate covers a multi-year course. The guidelines require it once only, at admission, so a student in the second year of a B.Sc is not meant to be sent back to the Mamlatdar for a fresh one. The stated destination is a paperless process in which caste, income and domicile are verified automatically against the issuing databases through DigiLocker, with scanned uploads treated as the interim arrangement until that linkage exists (scheme guidelines).

Start before admission, not after it. The Freeship Card comes first, and the undertaking signed for it is the part worth reading twice: the institution has to be paid within 7 working days of the scholarship landing in the account. The administration gets 30 days to verify and issue the card, and the card names the course the student intends to join, so a change of plan between the card and the seat goes back through the portal. On the day of admission the scholarship application itself is filed, and the college confirms the same day that the course actually taken matches the one printed on the card (scheme guidelines).

Filing runs on the National Scholarship Portal at scholarships.gov.in, starting with One Time Registration and then the scholarship application form. This is where the split matters: for this union territory the portal offers a post-matric form for OBC students and a post-matric form for EBC students, both named as PM YASASVI schemes, and it lists no separately named DNT post-matric form (National Scholarship Portal, scheme list for the UT). A DNT applicant should confirm with the scholarship cell which of the two notifications covers their community before filing, rather than assume a form is missing.

Locally the application does not go straight from student to portal. The UT's notice invites applications through the principal or head master of the school, institution, ITI, TTI, polytechnic or college, and asks the head to make sure eligible students apply, approve the applications against the eligibility criteria, and forward them to the district or state authority (UT notice for 2023-24). The territory has not always run this online at all: its 2021 notice for the post-matric EBC route invited applications offline, in a prescribed proforma, and only from government institutes, so a student comparing an old circular against the live portal is looking at two eras of the same scheme.

Checking Status and Chasing a Payment

Manual verification is meant to finish within 30 days of the application, and the guidelines provide for presumed approval where it does not, so a status that has not moved past the institution well beyond that window is worth raising rather than waiting out (scheme guidelines).

Sanction and payment are tracked in different places, which is why a verified application and an empty bank account can both be true at once. Once the sanction is issued the money moves through the public financial management system, and the payment leg is checked separately on Know Your Payment, where a failed Aadhaar seeding or a stale account number usually surfaces. The UT notice points students at NPCI's mapper status page to confirm their bank account is Aadhaar-linked before they get that far (UT notice for 2023-24). Every institution is required to have a grievance redressal officer, and a grievance not settled there escalates to the district and then above it.

Nobody is ranked against anybody. The guidelines direct that every eligible OBC, EBC and DNT candidate be given the scholarship if they meet the scheme's conditions, which makes the UT administration an implementing office rather than a selection committee (scheme guidelines). What rations awards is the budget. The scheme describes itself as funds-limited: a notional allocation is conveyed to each state and union territory at the start of the financial year in proportion to population, administrations are expected to keep proposals inside it, and demand that central assistance cannot meet has to be funded by the administration itself.

Two things decide who is paid first when the allocation will not stretch. Renewals are cleared before new cases, as above. And a student's institution decides their place in the queue: the guidelines put government institutions ahead of government-aided ones and both ahead of unaided private colleges, which leaves a UT student on a self-financed seat outside the territory last in line even with an approved application.

The guidelines also expect administrations to lay down their own merit-cum-means criteria for professional and non-professional courses alike, to the extent of available funds, and to sub-allocate the notional allocation district-wise and group-wise for non-professional courses (scheme guidelines). No such criteria are published for this territory, so a student here has nothing to work against beyond the eligibility test itself.

Lying on the form is the one error the scheme does not forgive. Cancellation is immediate, recovery of whatever has been paid is at the administration's discretion, and the debarment that follows runs across every scholarship scheme, permanently, with the portal built to refuse an application from a student already blacklisted (scheme guidelines).

Two moves need permission before they are made. A scholar who transfers to a different institution, or switches the subject they were awarded for, is expected to have the administration's approval in hand; where it is missing, the head of the institution stops the payment and reports it, and recovery of whatever was drawn is open to the administration. Walking away from the year's studies carries the same liability to refund. Unsatisfactory progress or irregular attendance, reported by the head of the institution, lets the sanctioning authority cancel, stop or withhold the award for as long as it sees fit.

The scheme is audited rather than trusted. Physical verification has to cover at least 10% of institutions or students chosen at random each year, every private institution offering courses at graduate level or above is inspected annually, and institutions file half-yearly self-audited reports with a social audit once a year on top (scheme guidelines). The guidelines also reserve the government's right to change the scheme's provisions at any time, so a rule that held in a student's first year is not guaranteed to hold in the third.

The scholarship cell sits with the Social Welfare Department at the District Court Premises, Fort Area, Moti Daman 396220, and it is the office that issues the territory's scholarship notices for all three districts (UT notice for 2023-24). Its 2023-24 notice gives a WhatsApp number, 9537500045, for assistance, and copies the notice to the assistant directors of education in Dadra & Nagar Haveli, Daman and Diu for circulation to institutions, to the collectors of the three districts, to the Mamlatdar in each, and to the block development officers in Daman and Diu.

For something stuck inside an application, the faster route is the institution's own grievance redressal officer first, then the escalation the portal provides. For a certificate, the counter is the Mamlatdar or, for an income certificate in Daman and Diu, the panchayat secretary and block development officer named above.