Post-Matric Scholarship for the Students Belonging to Scheduled Tribe for Studies in India(PMSSBSTSI)

Overview

About PMSSBSTSI

In Assam, the Post-Matric Scholarship for the Students Belonging to Scheduled Tribe for Studies in India is the state's delivery of the Ministry of Tribal Affairs' centrally sponsored scheme, handled by the Directorate of Tribal Affairs (Plain) in Guwahati. It pays a Scheduled Tribe student of Assam two things, from Class XI up to postgraduation: the compulsory non-refundable fees of the course and a monthly stipend.

Three facts shape the scheme for an Assam applicant today. Applications go through the National Scholarship Portal (NSP), where the state lists it as "Post Matric Scholarship To ST Students - Assam" (NSP, schemes of the State of Assam). The rules attached to that listing are the ministry's regulation applicable from 01-04-2022 (Ministry of Tribal Affairs regulation), not the older scheme note that still sits on the directorate's own website. And the money can trail the academic year by a long way: a directorate notice posted on 17 September 2026 (Directorate of Tribal Affairs (Plain)) said disbursement had been initiated for 2023-24, 2024-25 and 2025-26, fresh and renewal alike (directorate notice on disbursement and Aadhaar seeding).

The office now signs as the Directorate of Tribal Affairs (Plain). Its call for applications dated 19 October 2020 went out from the same Rukmini Nagar address under the name Directorate of Welfare of Plain Tribes and Backward Classes, and invited ST students and OBC or MOBC students together, for four separately named schemes: pre-matric and post-matric for ST, and pre-matric and post-matric for OBC (2020 advertisement).

Who runs it

Provider

At a glance

Key details

Calendar

Important dates

For 2026-27, Assam's listing on the portal (NSP, schemes of the State of Assam) sets these stages for the ST post-matric scheme:

Assam's window sits later than the regulation's suggested calendar, which runs student registration from 1 April to 30 September, asks states to open the portal by 1 May, and suggests disbursement by 31 December for fresh applicants and 15 November for renewals (Ministry of Tribal Affairs regulation). It is earlier than in 2020, though, when the directorate's call gave students until 30 November 2020 to apply online (2020 advertisement). The directorate's own application page gives only a tentative August to December advertising season, so the NSP listing is the date to trust.

Who can apply

Eligibility criteria

Start with a conflict you will see on this page. The myScheme record printed below, in this same section, says the applicant must belong to the Scheduled Tribes, Other Backward Classes or More Other Backward Classes (myScheme record). The scheme's own rules do not say that. The ministry regulation that NSP attaches to Assam's listing as its Specifications file requires the student to belong to a Scheduled Tribe of his or her domicile state, and its document list asks for an ST certificate from the state's competent authority (Ministry of Tribal Affairs regulation). The portal draws the same line: Assam's listing is named for ST students, and OBC students of Assam apply under a separate "Post Matric Scholarship To OBC Students - Assam" listing with an earlier deadline (NSP, schemes of the State of Assam). Read this scheme as ST-only.

The income test and the pass requirement are in the scheme record. The 2022 regulation adds conditions that matter most to students who study outside Assam or at a private college (Ministry of Tribal Affairs regulation):

• Assam pays even when the college is in another state. An ST student domiciled in Assam who takes a seat in Delhi or Pune still applies to Assam's scheme, because the state a student belongs to is the one that makes the award.
• Government colleges qualify anywhere; private ones need Assam's list. Any government institution in India is eligible. A non-government college is eligible only if the domicile state has empanelled it for that course, and a private university also needs an 'A' level accreditation from NAAC or NBA, or its equivalent.
• The institution needs a code. It must hold an AISHE, U-DISE, NCVT or SCVT code before its nodal officer can register on the portal, and without that officer no application can be verified.
• Salaried parents are judged on last year's income. For a salaried employee, the income of the previous financial year is the figure that counts.
• A missed first year is not fatal. A student who did not apply in the first year of an eligible course can apply in the second or a later year and draw the scholarship for the rest of the course.

Who cannot apply

Exclusions

The regulation carves out one group of otherwise eligible students completely: those admitted to one of the ministry's Top Class institutes, listed as 252 institutes when the rules were issued (Ministry of Tribal Affairs regulation).

The stream rule in the record also has concrete edges in the regulation's own examples: no scholarship for a BCom taken after a BA or BSc, and none for MBBS taken after a BTech. The ban on a second award is gentler in practice than the record's one-line version. A student who is offered another scholarship or stipend is not thrown out of this one; the regulation lets the student opt for the better-paying of the two and report that option to the awarding authority by way of the head of the institution.

Continuation

Renewal conditions

The award runs for the whole course and is renewed each year the student passes and moves up a class. The regulation settles two cases that the Assam record leaves open (Ministry of Tribal Affairs regulation). The medical certificate at the end of the record's document list exists for the first: a student kept out of the annual examination by illness or some other unforeseen event can still carry the award into the next year, once the head of the institution is satisfied with that certificate and puts in writing that the student would have passed. And a student whom the university promotes without a pass, subject to a later re-examination, is paid for the class he or she has been promoted to.

No second trip to the Mouzadar or the Block Development Officer is needed at renewal time: the income certificate obtained in the year of admission covers every later year of the course (Ministry of Tribal Affairs regulation). On the portal, the One Time Registration (OTR) number is issued once and holds for the student's entire academic career (National Scholarship Portal), so a renewing student logs in with the same OTR rather than registering again.

What you get

Award & benefits

The scholarship has two parts, a fee component and a stipend, and the group your course falls in decides the stipend. The directorate's website still carries an older scheme note, whose own text gives 01.04.2013 as the scheme's last revision, and it sorts courses differently (directorate's older scheme note). The rupee rates in both documents are the same; the grouping is not, so the group printed in the older note can understate what a BA or ITI student is owed under the 2022 regulation that NSP attaches to Assam's listing, and which the myScheme record also follows:

The fee component is fixed by the state's State Level Fee Fixation Committee, and the private-institution ceilings in the scheme record limit the Centre's support, not what Assam may pay: the regulation leaves the state free to pay above them and to account for the extra separately (Ministry of Tribal Affairs regulation). The regulation also lets each state choose between sending tuition straight to the college and paying everything to the student. The Assam record printed below describes the second route, with the whole amount going by DBT to the student's Aadhaar-linked account, and that is the reason the directorate's Aadhaar-seeding deadline, covered under How to Apply, decides whether money arrives.

Four groups of students can claim the disability allowance, not one. Alongside Divyangjan students, the regulation extends the extra Rs 800 a month for a hosteller and Rs 600 for a day scholar to students cured of leprosy and to students with sickle cell anaemia or thalassemia, as notified by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment (Ministry of Tribal Affairs regulation). The stipend itself is described as an incentive, not a refund of mess or hostel charges. The hosteller rate is not limited to a college hostel either: five students sharing a rented flat near a Guwahati college with a common mess can count as a deemed hostel, if the head of the institution approves the place after inspection and certifies that no hostel seat was available.

The older note lists extras that the 2022 regulation's value section leaves out: a book allowance of Rs 1,200 a year for correspondence students and study tour and thesis charges of up to Rs 1,600 each (directorate's older scheme note). The regulation names the fee component, the stipend and the disability allowance, and nothing else.

• The scheme covers the payment of compulsory non-refundable fees for the recognized post-matriculation or post-secondary course pursued by the student.
• There is a fee ceiling of ₹2,50,000/- per annum per student for Engineering courses in private sector institutes.
• There is a fee ceiling of ₹6,00,000/- per annum per student for Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery, Master of Surgery, and Doctor of Medicine courses in private sector institutes.
• There is a fee ceiling of ₹1,00,000/- per annum per student for all other courses in private sector institutes.
• Monthly Stipend (Payable For A Maximum Of 10 Months Annually)
• For Group I (Degree and Post Graduate professional courses): Hostellers receive ₹1,200/- per month (₹12,000/- annually), and day scholars receive ₹550/- per month (₹5,500/- annually).
• For Group II (Non-professional Degree and Post Graduate courses): Hostellers receive ₹820/- per month (₹8,200/- annually), and day scholars receive ₹530/- per month (₹5,300/- annually).
• For Group III (Vocational, Industrial Training Institute, and 3-year diploma courses): Hostellers receive ₹570/- per month (₹5,700/- annually), and day scholars receive ₹300/- per month (₹3,000/- annually).
• For Group IV (Post-matriculation non-degree courses): Hostellers receive ₹380/- per month (₹3,800/- annually), and day scholars receive ₹230/- per month (₹2,300/- annually).
• Additional Disability Allowance
• Specially-abled hosteller students receive an additional allowance of ₹800/- per month (₹9,600/- annually).
• Specially-abled day scholar students receive an additional allowance of ₹600/- per month (₹7,200/- annually).
• Benefit Disbursal Details
• The scholarship amounts are disbursed exclusively through the Direct Benefit Transfer mode directly into the Aadhaar-linked bank accounts of the beneficiaries.
• The stipend is payable monthly, calculated from 1st April or from the month of admission, whichever is later, until the month in which the annual examinations are completed.
• Conditions for Availment and Continuation
• The continuous disbursement of the scholarship is strictly dependent on the satisfactory academic progress, good conduct, and regularity in attendance of the enrolled scholars.
• The scholarship will be immediately cancelled or withheld if the student resorts to strikes or maintains irregular attendance without formal permission from the institution authorities.
• The scholarship will not be renewed if the student fails in a particular academic year, and the benefits will be paused until the student clears that class and gets promoted to the next class.

What to prepare

Documents required

Of all the papers, the income certificate is the one the regulation hedges with the most conditions (Ministry of Tribal Affairs regulation). It is taken once, at admission, in the same year as the admission, and stays valid for the course. Self-declarations and affidavits of self-assessed income are not accepted, so in Assam the income declaration form signed by a parent, guardian or husband goes in alongside a certificate from one of the authorities the record names, such as the Sub-Deputy Collector or the Mouzadar, never in place of it.

A student living in a deemed hostel needs the head of the institution's certificate that the approved residence is being used because no college hostel place was available. The account has to be held in the student's name, seeded with Aadhaar, tied to the mobile number, and kept active: the regulation asks applicants to keep it non-dormant so that the DBT credit can land.

Step by step

How to apply

Assam takes applications for this scheme only online, through NSP (NSP, schemes of the State of Assam). The sequence:

1. Get an OTR number. Since the 2024-25 academic year an OTR is required to apply on NSP. It is a 14-digit number generated from Aadhaar or an Aadhaar Enrolment ID, with face authentication, through the NSP OTR app (National Scholarship Portal). A Common Service Centre can do the whole job, OTR and application together, for Rs 30.
2. Choose the right listing. Log in with the OTR and pick "Post Matric Scholarship To ST Students - Assam", not the OBC or SC post-matric listings that Assam runs beside it.
3. Check your institution appears. If it does not, its nodal officer has to register it with its AISHE, U-DISE, NCVT or SCVT code before you can go further.
4. Chase the verification. The regulation puts the follow-up on the applicant: ask the institute nodal officer to verify before the deadline, and correct any remark if the application comes back defective (Ministry of Tribal Affairs regulation).

Tracking the Application and the Money

For an Assam applicant waiting on an older year's money, the check that matters first is Aadhaar seeding. The directorate's September 2026 notice says scholarships will be credited only into Aadhaar-seeded bank accounts and asks applicants to seed their accounts by 5 October 2026 (directorate notice on disbursement and Aadhaar seeding). NSP's Check Aadhaar Seeding Status link opens myAadhaar for that. Once the account is seeded, the Application Status login on NSP shows where the form stands, and the Track Your Payment link hands over to the PFMS "Know Your Payment" page, where the directorate's credit shows after release (National Scholarship Portal).

How winners are picked

Selection process

Assam does not rank applicants for this award. The regulation's section on selecting candidates is a chain of document checks, and it sets no ceiling on how many students a state may fund (Ministry of Tribal Affairs regulation). Your own college is the first gate: its nodal officer keeps paper copies of what you uploaded, checks the online form against them, and either passes it, turns it down or sends it back as defective, recording a reason you can see whenever it does not pass. After the college, district and state nodal officers look at the file again, at the second and third levels, with the same three choices.

Fine print

Terms & conditions

Several of the regulation's penalties are left to the awarding state, which for this scheme is the Government of Assam (Ministry of Tribal Affairs regulation):

• Lying on the form costs more than one year's money. Assam can cancel the award at once and claw back what it has paid, and the student is blacklisted from every scholarship scheme for good.
• Moving to another subject or another college without Assam's prior approval can cancel the award; the head of the institution has to report the move so that payment stops.
• Dropping out partway through a year can make that year's scholarship refundable, at Assam's discretion.

Above all of this, the Government of India can change the regulations at any time.

Get help

Contact

Start with your institution's nodal officer, who holds the first verification and sees the defect remarks. If a verified application from an earlier year still has not been paid, or the college cannot settle a dispute over your group or fee, write to the Director, Tribal Affairs (Plain), Assam at directorate-tap@assam.gov.in; the office itself sits on Satrinivash Path in Rukmini Nagar, Guwahati-6 (Directorate of Tribal Affairs (Plain), contact page). The page lists no telephone number for the Director's office. A fault on the portal itself, such as a login or OTR error, goes to NSP instead, whose home page links a helpdesk, a grievance registration form and the scheme-wise nodal officers (National Scholarship Portal).

Source

Official links

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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