Post-Matric Scholarship for Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST) Students-Bihar(PMSSCSTB)

Overview

About PMSSCSTB

A Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe student in Bihar who is waiting on the National Scholarship Portal, or filling in the state's BC-EBC scholarship site, is on the wrong screen. Bihar runs this scholarship on its own SC-ST post matric portal, and the form there cannot be finalized until a bank seeding check clears, which is why an application that looks complete can sit at the same stage for weeks.

Ownership of this scholarship is split down the middle, and the split decides which counter can answer you. What it pays is set by resolutions of Bihar's SC and ST Welfare Department, issued in the light of the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment's directions (post matric guidelines). Where you apply, who verifies you and who pays you belongs to the Education Department, whose Directorate of Secondary Education is the office named for queries on the SC-ST post matric portal. A rate question put to the school office, or a portal fault taken to the welfare office, comes back unanswered.

The scheme was once run through NSP 2.0. Bihar's post matric guidelines record the state's move to a Post Matric Scholarship Portal built by NIC, with a district scholarship committee constituted to implement it (post matric guidelines), and the SC-ST site now carries the National Scholarship Portal among its outside links rather than as the place to apply. Which address you need also depends on the year you are chasing: the current site holds the live session, a separate SC-ST site holds 2022-23 and 2023-24, and the sessions from 2019-20 to 2021-22 sit on the older combined portal (SC-ST post matric portal).

Who runs it

Provider

At a glance

Key details

Calendar

Important dates

Bihar announces the window on the SC-ST portal itself rather than through a national calendar, and it has recently taken two academic sessions through a single window.

A student who missed an earlier year should read the open notice before writing that year off, because a combined window is how the state has been clearing its backlog.

Who can apply

Eligibility criteria

The income ceiling has moved once, and the certificate in your file has to match the current one. The guidelines put the maximum annual income of the parent or guardian of a Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe applicant at Rs 2,50,000 for 2019-20 and 2020-21, raised to Rs 3.00 lakh from 2021-22 under departmental resolution 2416 (post matric guidelines). A certificate quoting the earlier figure is not the number the portal is checking against.

One restriction that binds the other half of the same guidelines is lifted here. A Backward Class or Extremely Backward Class family may claim the post-matric scholarship for no more than two sons, and the guidelines say in the same clause that this rule does not apply to Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe applicants (post matric guidelines). Brothers in an SC or ST household are assessed one at a time, on income and course, with no family count running against them.

Who cannot apply

Exclusions

Holding a second award is the exclusion the portal enforces itself. Its student instructions reject an application where the student is already taking the benefit of another scholarship scheme for the same course and the same academic session (SC-ST post matric portal). A student who also holds a departmental stipend or a separate state award for that year has to settle which one to keep before finalizing.

Mode of study cuts into the benefit rather than the entitlement. The fee and allowance schedule the department circulates for SC and ST students puts students on correspondence or online courses outside the academic allowance, while leaving the fee component alone (SC and ST fee and allowance schedule).

Continuation

Renewal conditions

Renewal exists in this scheme, but not as anything a student clicks. The portal's public entry for 2026-27 is a new registration, while the guidelines have the District Programme Officer (SSA) draw up separate course-wise lists of new and renewal applications, with the renewal list sanctioned first and the new applications taken up after it (post matric guidelines; SC-ST post matric portal). What continues from last year is your position in that queue, not your file.

The paperwork is dated to the session, which is the other reason nothing carries forward. For 2026-27 the portal fixes those dates itself: an income certificate issued before 01-04-2026 will not be accepted, and an academic document falling outside 01-04-2026 to 31-03-2027 will not be accepted with it (SC-ST post matric portal). Four years of a degree therefore means four income certificates, not one taken at admission.

What you get

Award & benefits

The award has two parts, and the fee part follows where you study rather than what you are billed. At a government institution, inside Bihar or outside it, the scholarship is allowed at the tuition and other compulsory non-refundable fees the institution itself prescribes. At a recognised private institution inside Bihar, the SC and ST Welfare Department's own course-wise ceiling applies, running from a modest cap on a senior secondary course up to the top slab for professional degrees such as medicine and engineering. At a recognised private institution outside Bihar, what is allowed is the rate a government institution in that state charges, not the private fee on your bill (SC and ST fee and allowance schedule).

A maintenance or academic allowance is paid on top of that fee component, at the rates the Government of India fixes, annexed to the department's own resolution, with a higher rate for hostellers than for day scholars (SC and ST fee and allowance schedule). That schedule is circulated as a scanned annexure rather than as a page on the portal, so it is the document to open, and to match against your own course, before assuming a private college's whole fee is covered.

• Scholarship and maintenance allowance will be payable on the basis of the criteria prescribed in the resolution issued by the Government of India from time to time.

What to prepare

Documents required

Two of the certificates have to come from the right level of office. The portal's student instructions require the income certificate and the caste certificate to be issued at R.O. level, and they let a caste certificate from either of the two previous academic sessions stand for the current one (SC-ST post matric portal). The two certificates therefore run on different clocks, which is a common source of a defect notice.

The item that stops most applications is not a certificate at all. Aadhaar seeding is compulsory: a student whose Aadhaar is not seeded to a bank account for DBT cannot finalize the application, and the portal links the UIDAI bank mapper so the seeding can be tested before the form is opened (SC-ST post matric portal; UIDAI bank mapper). Seeding to the wrong account is the quieter version of the same fault, because approval then produces no credit.

Where an uploaded document is found incorrect or invalid, the portal expects the student to log in, correct the document number and upload it again. The guidelines route a bank discrepancy the same way: where the applicant's bank details change or are found to be in error, the application is transferred back to the applicant's own login for correction and re-upload (post matric guidelines).

Step by step

How to apply

The application moves through a fixed chain, and the student controls only the first half of it.

Step six is not on your screen at all. It happens on a separate institute portal that colleges and schools log into from the same site, so an application sits still until your institution's nodal person acts on it (institute portal).

Tracking is deliberately two-channel. The portal says status information is sent by SMS and tells students who receive no SMS to log in regularly and watch the application themselves; Application Status is a separate entry point from the student login, and both ask for the academic year before anything else (SC-ST post matric portal). After approval the money is released through PFMS and CFMS under the state's post matric guidelines (post matric guidelines), so a case can read as approved on the portal while the credit is still moving through the payment system.

How winners are picked

Selection process

No merit list decides this scholarship. A district scholarship committee sanctions it, and the guidelines set out who sits on that committee: the Deputy Development Commissioner as ex-officio chairperson, the District Education Officer, every sub-divisional officer and sub-divisional welfare officer in the district, the District Programme Officer (SSA) as member secretary, the District Welfare Officer, one social worker each from the district's Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe communities, and the district's SC or ST Member of Parliament or MLA or their authorised representative (post matric guidelines). The same guidelines hold that committee, and the District Programme Officer (SSA) in particular, answerable for any irregularity in the selection, sanction or distribution of the scholarship.

The test the portal states is narrower and more immediate: the scholarship amount is released only after the uploaded income and caste certificates are successfully verified (SC-ST post matric portal).

Fine print

Terms & conditions

Correction is rationed. Where a defect is raised, the portal requires the student to fix it and finalize the application again within 15 days, and it allows a maximum of three attempts at clearing a defect or a rejection before the application is rejected outright (SC-ST post matric portal). Missing the correction deadline ends the application as surely as never applying.

The conditions that remain are the ones the portal prints on its own notice board: the seeding check before finalize, the session dating on every certificate, and the bar on holding a second scholarship for the same course in the same year.

Get help

Contact

Help is routed to the district, and the guidelines name a different office for a technical fault than the portal does for a scholarship question. The portal sends students to the District Scholarship Committee and names the Directorate of Secondary Education, Education Department, Government of Bihar for queries and feedback (SC-ST post matric portal). For the portal itself, the guidelines make the MIS Co-ordinator working under the Bihar Education Project Council at district level the technical nodal in-charge (post matric guidelines). No student helpline number or email address is published on the SC-ST site, so the district committee and your institution's nodal person are the two doors that exist.

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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