Post Matric Scholarship for SC students (Delhi)(PMSFSSD)

Overview

About PMSFSSD

The Department for the Welfare of SC/ST/OBC at Vikas Bhawan runs nine scholarship schemes and sorts them by who pays. This scholarship heads that list as one of the four marked CSS, and the department sends all four to the National Scholarship Portal rather than to its own citizen portal (Department for the Welfare of SC/ST/OBC, services and schemes). Two other documents from the same department point the other way: the scheme note for this award tells applicants to file on e-District, and the notice opening the 2025-26 round put five state-funded schemes and several centrally sponsored schemes on the e-district portal with a last date of April 30 (The Pioneer, 7 April 2026). Both routes are live in the department's own material, so the portal is the first thing to settle and the form is the second.

The award is the Government of India's post matriculation scheme for Scheduled Caste students; Delhi's part is implementation. In the department's own words it has taken over implementation of the centrally sponsored scheme of post matric scholarship to students belonging to the SC category for pursuing further studies at post matriculation or post secondary levels within India (Delhi scheme note, Post Matric Scholarship for SC students).

Two lines in the department's summary table are worth fixing early. It puts the eligible group at students studying in class XI and onwards rather than at college admission, and sets the family income ceiling at Rs 2.50 lakh a year (eligibility for various scholarship schemes, DSCST). The same row describes the award in one sentence: all non-refundable fee and maintenance allowances as per guidelines are paid to the eligible students. No rank, no quota of awards and no cut-off score appears in it.

Delhi has put its own volumes for this scheme on the record in its Outcome Budget, which shows 14,903 applications under this scheme in 2018-19 against a target of 15,000 for the following year, and 9,549 of that year's applicants paid (Outcome Budget 2019-20, Department for Welfare of SC/ST/OBC). Read that pair as a photograph of 2018-19, not as this year's position.

Who runs it

Provider

At a glance

Key details

Calendar

Important dates

The department opens its scholarship schemes by notice rather than on a fixed annual calendar, and the myScheme record for this scheme leaves both of its date fields empty.

The most recent notice is the 2025-26 one. The Delhi Government invited applications from SC, ST and OBC students for the academic year 2025-26, naming five state-funded schemes and several centrally sponsored schemes, with a last date of April 30 and the e-district portal as the route (The Pioneer, 7 April 2026). It does not name this scholarship individually, which is precisely why the portal question is worth taking to the institution while a window is open rather than after it shuts.

Older rounds sat elsewhere in the year. The department's site still carries its invitation for 2019-20, open from 01/12/2019 to 31/03/2020 (Department for the Welfare of SC/ST/OBC), and the Outcome Budget for that year noted that applications for all its scholarship schemes would start on the e-district portal from December 2019. A window that opens partway through the session and shuts within weeks puts the income certificate at risk more than anything else on the list: one obtained early can be out of date by the time the form appears.

Who can apply

Eligibility criteria

Caste, income, course level and paperwork decide it, and Delhi is strictest on the last of those.

The ceiling of Rs 2.50 lakh covers what the parents or guardians earn from all sources, and Delhi will read it only off an income certificate issued by the office of an SDM of Delhi that is still valid on the date the application is submitted rather than on the date it was issued. The caste certificate has to be one issued by the Government of NCT of Delhi. Siblings do not divide the ceiling between them: all the children of the same family are eligible subject to that income limit on the parents (Delhi scheme note).

Where you study and where you belong are different questions. The central scheme is awarded by the state or union territory in which the applicant is permanently settled or domiciled, on that state's own terms of domicile (Department of Social Justice and Empowerment, Post-Matric Scholarship for SC students). A Delhi student at a college in another state therefore still applies through Delhi, and Delhi handles that case with a document rule rather than a bar: for institutes situated outside Delhi, the applicant uploads an Institute Verification page and a parent or guardian verification page.

Who cannot apply

Exclusions

Holding any other scholarship or stipend, a merit scholarship included, ends eligibility, and the institution has to certify in writing that you are not drawing one.

Two further bars read the shape of your academic record rather than your income. A candidate who has passed one stage of education and is studying at the same stage in a different subject is out, and the department gives its own examples: I.Sc. after I.A., B.Com. after B.A., or an M.A. in another subject. So is a student who has completed an educational career in one professional line and started another, such as L.L.B. after B.T. or B.Ed. That second bar carries an old carve-out that still stands: from the academic year 1980-81, studies in two professional courses are allowed (Delhi scheme note).

Continuation

Renewal conditions

The department prescribes a renewal form but publishes no renewal calendar to go with it. Separate application forms are laid down for fresh and for renewal claims (Planning Department chapter on welfare of SC/ST/OBC), while the scholarship itself is available for the complete duration of the course (Delhi scheme note). Because the income certificate is tested against the date of submission, every renewal year needs a certificate that is current when the form goes in, not the one that carried the first year.

What you get

Award & benefits

The award splits into a maintenance allowance and a fee reimbursement, and the two behave differently. Delhi prints the allowance by course group, in per month terms.

Those are the rates the department still publishes for the scheme, and they are worth confirming with it before you budget on them. The same note is the one that routes applicants to e-District, which the department's current scheme list no longer does, and the central scheme underneath it was rewritten by the Cabinet in December 2020, replacing the older committed liability system with a fixed Centre and state split (Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs, 23 December 2020).

The second component is the reimbursement of compulsory non-refundable fees, which Delhi defines by listing what counts: enrolment or registration, tuition, games, union, library, magazine, medical examination and other fees compulsorily payable to the institution or university or board. Refundable deposits are expressly excluded, so caution money and a security deposit are recovered from the college, never from the department. Hostel rent is paid as per the guidelines of the scheme rather than at a rate Delhi publishes beside these ones.

Delhi does add money of its own, but only at school level. The Planning Department's chapter on the department's schemes records that a Class XI or XII student scoring 55% and above who draws this centrally sponsored scholarship gets a supplementary amount from the Government of NCT budget to bring the total to Rs 3,000 or Rs 4,500 per annum, according to the marks range, so that it sits at par with the Delhi Government scheme (Planning Department chapter). That chapter carries budget allocations for 2017-18, so treat the top-up as dated and check it with the department.

• Maintenance Allowance (per month)
• Group 1 (e.g., Medicine, Engineering): Hostellers ₹1,200/-, Day Scholars ₹550/-
• Group 2 (e.g., Pharmacy, Nursing): Hostellers ₹820/-, Day Scholars ₹530/-
• Group 3 (e.g., BA/BSc): Hostellers ₹570/, Day Scholars ₹300/-
• Group 4 (e.g., ITI, Polytechnic): Hostellers ₹380/-, Day Scholars ₹230/-
• Reimbursement of Compulsory Non-refundable Fees.
• Thesis Typing/Printing Charges for Research Scholars.
• Book Allowance for Correspondence Courses.
• Book Bank Facility for Specified Courses.
• Additional Allowance for Students With Disabilities.
• Benefits are for the complete duration of the course.
• Hostel rent is provided as per scheme guidelines.

What to prepare

Documents required

Beyond the identity and academic papers, four Delhi-specific requirements decide most cases.

The fee structure must sit on the official letterhead of the institute and carry the stamp and signature of its head, so a printout from a college website will not do. The income certificate must come from an SDM of Delhi and be valid on the submission date. The institution must issue a certificate giving the date of admission, the commencement and completion of the course, and confirming that you draw no other scholarship or stipend. And the bank account has to be seeded with the student's own Aadhaar number, because the money moves by Direct Benefit Transfer into that account and into no other (Delhi scheme note).

Step by step

How to apply

Start by settling which portal owns the scheme you are claiming.

The department's current guidelines qualify that table in one place: financial assistance for higher studies abroad is marked offline there, so the e-District row does not carry it in practice (scholarship scheme guidelines 2025-26). And the e-District entry for this scholarship has not been retired: Post matric Scholarship schemes for SC is still listed there as a service of the Department of Welfare of SC/ST (e-District Delhi, service guidelines). Ask the scholarship nodal officer at your institution which route it is set up to verify, then file once.

Filing on both portals to hedge does not work, and the asymmetry is worth knowing. Once a college has approved this scheme's NSP form, the department's manual directs it to throw out the same student's e-District form at institute level (instructions for the institutions, Department for the Welfare of SC/ST/OBC). The NSP file survives that collision; the e-District one does not.

Which portal took the form also decides where you read its status: Track your Application on the e-District home page for a state-portal filing, your own login on the National Scholarship Portal for this one, and the e-District home page carries its own pointer for registration at the NSP portal (e-District Delhi). Where the status reads approved and nothing has been credited, the break is usually the bank account rather than the file; the department points citizens to NPCI's Bharat Aadhaar Seeding Enabler platform, which lets you carry out seeding and de-seeding yourself (Department for the Welfare of SC/ST/OBC).

How winners are picked

Selection process

The department's terms close the question in one line: all eligible Scheduled Caste candidates will be given scholarship as prescribed in this scheme (Delhi scheme note). There is no list to be placed on and no score to clear, which leaves the eligibility test doing the entire job.

What sits where a selection stage would be is an audit trail. Verification of scholarship applications is 100% by the head of the institution, 10% of the recommended applications are re-verified by the Education Department's authorities, and 5% of the recommended or approved applications are re-verified by the department's own officials headed by the Deputy Director (Scholarship) (instructions for the institutions). An approval at your college is therefore not the last word on the file; it can be pulled back and read again after it has been recommended.

Payment then waits on two governments moving in order. The state verifies its applications and releases its 40% share first, and only when that data reaches the Centre does the remaining 60% go into the beneficiary's Aadhaar-seeded account by Direct Benefit Transfer (Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, Rajya Sabha reply, 10 December 2025). Delhi is not one of the North Eastern states, where that ratio runs at 10% and 90% instead.

Fine print

Terms & conditions

One clause deserves more attention than the rest: an incomplete application will be treated as cancelled without giving any information (Delhi scheme note), so nothing arrives to tell you the file has died.

The others are administrative and mostly point elsewhere. Hostel rent is given as per the guidelines of the scheme. The rulebook the department follows is the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment's (Delhi scheme note), and it links socialjustice.gov.in as the guidelines for its centrally sponsored schemes (services and schemes). Nothing can be paid at all until the student's bank account is seeded with the student's own Aadhaar.

Get help

Contact

Chase the institution before you chase the department, because it is the institution's login that holds an application and forwards it. Where that route runs out, this scheme's files belong to the Deputy Director (Scholarship), and the department publishes its address as B-Block, 2nd Floor, Vikas Bhawan, IP Estate, New Delhi 110002 and its telephone as 011-23379512 (Department for the Welfare of SC/ST/OBC). An institute that is recognised but missing from the e-District portal is not something the applicant can fix: the institute has to write to its own administrative department, in the format published on the department's website, to have its name added (instructions for the institutions).

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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