Pre Matric Scholarship for SC students- DNH & DD(PREMSC)

Overview

About PREMSC

A Scheduled Caste child in Class IX at a school in Silvassa, Daman or Diu is applying to a scheme whose rates and rulebook come from Delhi and whose calendar comes from Moti Daman. The Union Territory's Social Welfare Department publishes one notice a year listing every scholarship open on the National Scholarship Portal, and the row for the pre-matric SC line carries four dates rather than one: the day the form closes, and three verification deadlines after it. A form submitted on time and left unverified pays nothing.

The name on the territory's notice is shorter than the name of the scheme, and the difference is worth knowing before a family reads either. What the Social Welfare Department advertises is a Pre Matric Scholarship for SC Students. What the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment actually runs, under guidelines issued in March 2022 for 2021-2022 to 2025-26, is a scheme built by folding an older Scheduled Caste award together with a much older award for the children of parents in unclean and hazardous occupations, and then keeping the two apart as Component 1 and Component 2. Only Component 1, the Classes IX and X Scheduled Caste line, appears on the territory's list of schemes open on the portal (UT Administration notice for 2026-27). A household that qualifies through a parent's occupation rather than through caste will not find a row of its own here and should put the question to the department directly.

The split of work behind the scheme is clean, and confusing the halves is what makes a missed date look like a refusal. Delhi fixes the rate, the income line and the two classes covered. Moti Daman decides when the window opens and shuts, which officer signs, which certificates the counter wants, and how quickly a verified file moves. Nothing in the first half is negotiable locally, and nothing in the second half is announced nationally.

For 2026-27 the territory has also relabelled what a family is applying to. Its annexure now sorts every scheme on the portal into merit-based and welfare-based, and files the pre-matric SC line as a Welfare Based Scheme (UT Administration notice for 2026-27). The label is not cosmetic: it decides what else a child is allowed to hold alongside it.

Who runs it

Provider

At a glance

Key details

Calendar

Important dates

The territory publishes one annexure covering every scheme it runs on the portal, and the pre-matric SC line has a row of its own inside it. These are the dates for the current cycle.

The same four dates, a year earlier, read 31 October 2025, then 15 November 2025 twice, then 30 November 2025 (UT Administration notice for 2025-26). Two identical cycles make a habit worth planning around rather than a fixed rule, and the annexure is reissued each July.

Reading the closing date off a neighbouring row is the mistake that costs a year, because the rows are not uniform. In the 2026-27 annexure the pre-matric line for students with disabilities carries no date at all and is marked not yet opened, while the SC row was already carrying its full chain when the notice went out (UT Administration notice for 2026-27). A year earlier the same disability row closed on 31 August 2025, two months ahead of this one (UT Administration notice for 2025-26).

Who can apply

Eligibility criteria

The bar is a category test, a class test and an income test, all three applied together, and none of them is a merit test. The scheme guidelines open the award to nationals of India, then ask for full time study in Class IX or X, membership of a Scheduled Caste, and parental or guardian income from all sources of no more than Rs 2.50 lakh a year.

Two more conditions belong to the territory. Domicile of the Union Territory is one: the award is made by the administration a child belongs to rather than by the one a school stands in, which is what decides who pays for a student studying away from home. The school is the other, and it fails more applications than the certificates do. Only a government school, or a private school recognised by a state government, a union territory administration or a central board and carrying a valid UDISE code, is inside the scheme at all; a child at a school outside that description has no route in whatever the caste certificate says.

Who cannot apply

Exclusions

myScheme leaves the exclusions field on this scheme empty, so what actually bars a Class IX or Class X student sits in two other documents: the central guidelines, and the territory's notice for the year.

The bar that has just moved is the one on holding more than one award. The territory's 2025-26 notice stated it flatly, that a student is eligible for only one scholarship out of all the central awards meant for SC, ST, OBC, EBC and disability categories (UT Administration notice for 2025-26). For 2026-27 the wording is different: under the revised classification an eligible student may hold one merit-based scholarship in addition to one or more welfare-based ones, subject to each scheme's own conditions (UT Administration notice for 2026-27). Since this line is a welfare-based scheme, the practical question for a family is no longer whether a second award is possible at all, but whether the second one is merit-based. The guidelines' own bar has not been withdrawn in print, so a household planning on two awards should get the answer from the department before filing rather than after.

A year sat twice is paid once. Any given class carries the award for a single year, so a child who takes Class IX again draws nothing for the second attempt (scheme guidelines). Where a second award does come through, the choice belongs to the student and the head of the institution has to be told which way it went.

Continuation

Renewal conditions

Automatic is not the same as unattended. The rulebook wants the year to turn over on two facts the school reports, that the child was promoted and that the child came back, with no second form from the family. The territory keeps the school inside that loop explicitly: renewal here is governed by the scheme guidelines and made subject to promotion, satisfactory academic performance, attendance and verification by the institution on the portal (UT Administration notice for 2026-27). If the school does not upload, nothing renews on its own.

Two things have to hold for the money to continue. Academic performance has to be satisfactory, and attendance has to reach 75% in every academic year, read off an Aadhaar based attendance system rather than a register (scheme guidelines). Because this award stops at the Class X board, that test has to be met exactly twice and the renewal machinery has to work exactly once. The guidelines carve out one exception by name, for a child kept away from the annual examination by illness, and they leave the institution to decide whether the certificate offered by the prescribed authority is good enough.

What you get

Award & benefits

There is one figure for the year, it is not a monthly stipend or a fee reimbursement, and what moves it is where the child sleeps rather than what the child scores (scheme guidelines).

On top of the row that applies, a Divyang student is paid a further 10%, with disability read as the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 defines it and the certifying authority designated by the appropriate government (scheme guidelines).

The whole of it lands in one instalment, in the account of the student or the parent, by direct benefit transfer. The guidelines then date that instalment by when the claim arrived: for applications received between 1 April and 31 July the central share is due to be released by 30 August, and for anything filed after those dates the clock is two months at the territory's end and a further month at the centre's (scheme guidelines). In a union territory with no legislature of its own the centre carries the whole share, so there is no second half of the payment waiting on a local budget line.

• Financial support for SC students studying in Std. IX and X.
• ₹3,500/- per annum assistance for day scholars.
• ₹7,000/- per annum assistance for hostellers.
• Additional 10% allowance for Divyang students.
• Encourages continuation of education among economically weaker students.

What to prepare

Documents required

One certificate has come off the list, and it is the one families in this territory most often go looking for. For SC and OBC scholarship schemes administered by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, the territory's current notice instructs that submission of a domicile certificate shall not be insisted upon, in line with Government of India instructions (UT Administration notice for 2026-27). The scheme record on this page still carries a domicile certificate among its documents, and both are true in their own sense: domicile still decides which administration pays, but for this scheme the certificate proving it is no longer to be demanded at the counter.

What is still compulsory is short and specific about who signs. A valid caste certificate and a valid income certificate, each issued by the competent authority for that certificate and not by the school, and each uploaded in original rather than as a scan of a photocopy. A Divyang student additionally needs a UDID number, and a family without one is pointed to a self-service application, a common service centre or a Saral Seva Kendra to get it before the scholarship form can be finished.

The rulebook behind the scheme imagines none of this. Its design has the portal accept no scan whatever, and checks eligibility instead against the issuing department's own records over DigiLocker or an equivalent mechanism, with the Aadhaar number as the key (scheme guidelines). Silvassa, Daman and Diu are not there yet. Plan for the upload.

Step by step

How to apply

The route is the National Scholarship Portal, and the territory names no portal of its own beside it. What trips families up here is sequence rather than paperwork.

1. Generate the One Time Registration number first. The NSP OTR app issues this number once, off an Aadhaar number or an enrolment ID, and the portal then treats it as the child's identity for every scholarship year that follows. Until it exists there is no application form to fill (UT Administration notice for 2026-27).
2. Check that the school can still verify. For 2026-27 the territory accepts registration only from institutes holding a valid AISHE, UDISE+ or NCVT code, and a school that never finished its KYC has to put its head of institute and its nodal officer through face authentication before either can touch a student's file (UT Administration notice for 2026-27).
3. Apply on admission day, not on notice day. The guidelines put the trigger on the date of admission: the school is to see the claim filed online the day the child joins, and to confirm bonafide enrolment there and then (scheme guidelines). The October date in the annexure is the outer limit, not the starting gun.
4. Let the school push it up. Verification, not submission, is where a claim stalls: until the school's nodal officer clears it against the scheme guidelines and forwards it to the district or territory authority, no officer above the school ever sees it.

A household that cannot file at home can use a common service centre. The whole job there, the reference number, the biometric authentication, the OTR and the completed form, is capped at Rs 30 including taxes, which means a centre quoting more is quoting above the published rate (UT Administration notice for 2026-27).

Where a Submitted Form Can Be Watched

The student corner of the portal is where a filed claim is followed: alongside OTR and the application itself it carries a track your payment service, Aadhaar seva and, for Divyang students, UDID services (UT Administration notice for 2026-27). The Social Welfare Department publishes no separate territorial status page for this scheme, so there is nothing local to refresh. A stalled file is chased through the school that holds it, and the school in turn has a line the department prints for institutes, a scholarship cell reachable on WhatsApp at 9537500045 during office hours (UT Administration notice for 2026-27).

How winners are picked

Selection process

There is no ranking, no interview and no cut-off. Eligibility is the whole test, and what the guidelines ask of an administration instead is that it goes looking for the children who qualify.

That duty is written as a targeting instruction rather than a screening one. Every Scheduled Caste student under the income ceiling is eligible, but the administration is directed to identify the poorest eligible households in mission mode and enrol them, naming in particular households carrying three or more deprivations under SECC-2011 and households where one or both parents are illiterate (scheme guidelines). How many awards the territory can make in a year is not an announced quota either: the total is pegged at the highest of the past three years for which a database exists, so the ceiling follows how many children the administration has already found rather than a figure set in advance.

Checking is done by sample. Physical verification at territory, district and block level has to cover at least 10% of institutions or students, drawn at random by an algorithm (scheme guidelines), which is why a correctly verified file is occasionally revisited without anything having gone wrong.

Fine print

Terms & conditions

The award is for studies in India only. Aadhaar sits under all of it, as the identity document notified for the Ministry's scholarship schemes and as the rail the payment prefers to travel on, with the parent's or guardian's consent taken before an Aadhaar based payment is made.

One protection is written into the same paragraph and is worth knowing before an office quotes Aadhaar at a family: where authentication fails for any reason, the applicant is to be permitted to establish identity by other means, so that a genuine claimant is not deprived of the benefit (scheme guidelines).

Two conditions bite only after money has been paid. A scholarship obtained on a false statement is cancelled, recovered at the administration's discretion, and followed by a debarment from every scholarship scheme; and a scholar who discontinues the studies the award was made for, part way through the year, is liable to refund it (scheme guidelines).

Get help

Contact

The department works from one address for all three districts. Its notices carry the Social Welfare Department at the District Court Premises, Fort Area, Moti Daman 396220, with 0260 2230854 printed beneath it (UT Administration notice for 2025-26).

Schools have a faster line than families do. Institute queries are taken by the scholarship cell on WhatsApp at 9537500045 during office hours, which is the channel the department prints for principals rather than for parents (UT Administration notice for 2026-27).

A family in Dadra and Nagar Haveli or in Diu does not have to travel to Daman to raise something. The notice reaches schools through the Assistant Director of Education for each district, and the Mamlatdar in each district is separately asked to facilitate the timely issue of the caste and income certificates these schemes need, so both offices are local ones with a stated part in this (UT Administration notice for 2026-27).

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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