Pre-Matric Scholarship for Students with Disabilities, DNH & DD(PREMSSD)

Overview

About PREMSSD

The pre-matric scholarship for students with disabilities in Dadra & Nagar Haveli and Daman & Diu is not a scheme the union territory wrote. It is the Classes IX and X component of a central umbrella scheme, and the National Scholarship Portal opened it for 2026-27 on 25 July 2026, with student applications closing on 30 September 2026 (National Scholarship Portal). What the UT administration controls is the part a family in Silvassa, Daman or Diu actually deals with: which officer signs the income certificate, which school forwards the form, and who checks it afterwards.

The scheme belongs to the Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities, which runs six scholarship components for students with benchmark disabilities. Pre-matric is the first of them and covers only Classes IX and X. Its national ceiling is 25,000 slots a year, and that figure includes renewal cases: fresh applications are taken up only against the slots left over once every renewal has been processed, and slots can be shifted between the pre-matric, post-matric and top class components when one of them draws too few applications. Clearing the eligibility test therefore does not by itself win the money. Payment is credited to the student's Aadhaar-linked bank account by direct benefit transfer, not routed through the school (Revised guidelines, Scholarships for Students with Disabilities).

Because this is a central sector scheme, DNH & DD does not set the rates or invent conditions of its own. Its Social Welfare Department is the delivery agency: it advertises the scheme, its nodal officers verify what schools send up, and it answers for the payment afterwards. That department sits at the District Court Premises, Fort Area, Moti Daman, and a single office there serves all three districts (UT Administration of DNH & DD scholarship notice).

That single-office arrangement is recent. Dadra and Nagar Haveli was merged with Daman and Diu into one union territory on January 26, 2020, and the older territory became one of the three districts of the new one (UT of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu). A parent in Silvassa and a parent in Diu are therefore writing to the same Moti Daman address, several hundred kilometres apart, with Gujarat in between.

How many of the national slots reach this territory is not published, and the rule for splitting them has itself changed. The guidelines dated 25 September 2024 distributed slots state by state on a formula combining the number of eligible applications received and each state's share of the population of persons with disabilities (Revised guidelines, Scholarships for Students with Disabilities). An office memorandum of 4 September 2025 deleted that formula, so final selection now runs on the portal against the slots available for fresh applications (DEPwD office memorandum).

Who runs it

Provider

At a glance

Key details

Calendar

Important dates

myScheme leaves both date fields on this scheme blank, and the binding calendar is the one NSP publishes for each departmental line separately. Of the three lines the Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities runs on the portal, pre-matric has the shortest student window and the earliest closing date. These are the dates published for 2026-27.

The four stage shape is not new and is worth planning around. The UT's notice for 2024-25 published the same chain for this scheme, with the student window closing on 31.08.2024, defective applications and institute verification running to 15.09.2024 and nodal officer verification to 30.09.2024 (UT Administration of DNH & DD scholarship notice). A form submitted on the last student day still has to survive two rounds of checking after that, and a school that misses its own verification date ends the claim as surely as a missed student deadline.

Who can apply

Eligibility criteria

Eligibility starts at the certificate rather than the report card. The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 sets the floor at not less than forty per cent of a specified disability, as certified by the certifying authority, and its schedule of specified disabilities reaches further than most families expect: dwarfism, muscular dystrophy and acid attack victims all sit inside its locomotor disability entry, and the same schedule separately names specific learning disabilities, thalassemia and sickle cell disease alongside blindness, low vision and hearing impairment (Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016). The UT's own scholarship notice puts the test to schools in the same terms, as 40% and above with a valid certificate issued by the competent authority (UT Administration of DNH & DD scholarship notice, 2023-24).

What an applicant has to hold alongside it was rewritten in September 2025. Two documents are named now, the Unique Disability Identity card and Aadhaar; the earlier formula of a certificate plus biometric authentication, with UDID enrolment listed separately after it, is gone (DEPwD office memorandum). For a Class IX family whose certificate has been sitting in a folder since primary school and was never carried through to a card, that is a missing eligibility document rather than a missing convenience.

Where that certificate comes from is a local question, and this UT has written its own rules for it. Under Rule 33 of the Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu Rights of Persons with Disabilities Rules, 2021, an application in Form IV goes to the medical authority or other notified competent authority in the district where the applicant lives, or to the medical authority at the government hospital where the person was treated. If the applicant is a minor, which most Class IX students are, or has an intellectual disability, the legal guardian files it. Rule 34 then gives the medical authority a month to issue the certificate, and it either makes the certificate permanent or writes a validity period on it depending on whether the degree of disability can change (DNH & DD Rights of Persons with Disabilities Rules, 2021).

The rest of the test is quickly stated. The student is in Class IX or Class X as a regular full time student, in a government school or a school recognised by the government or by a central or state board. Parental or guardian income from all sources must not exceed Rs 2.5 lakh a year, which is the ceiling the guidelines set for the pre-matric and post-matric lines and a fraction of the Rs 8 lakh they allow on the top class line. No more than two children with disabilities of the same parents may hold the scholarship, with twins as the stated exception (Revised guidelines, Scholarships for Students with Disabilities).

One condition sits outside the eligibility list and still decides whether the form can be submitted at all. NSP will not accept an application from a student with a disability until that student has logged in to the UDID portal and consented to sharing UDID details with the portal (National Scholarship Portal).

Who cannot apply

Exclusions

Neither the scheme record for this UT nor the guidelines print a heading called exclusions, so the disqualifications sit inside the general conditions and have to be collected from there.

Repeating a class ends the claim for that year: scholarship for studying in any class is available for one year only, and a student sitting Class IX a second time gets nothing for the repeat. Taking a second award ends it too, and the discretion a student used to have here is gone: the superseded text let the holder pick whichever award was more beneficial and tell the awarding authority through the head of the institution (Scheme of Scholarship for Students with Disabilities, the superseded text), and the current text simply bars a holder from availing any other scholarship or stipend. Dropping out mid-year makes the student liable to refund the amount already paid, at the department's discretion. And the award is conditional on progress and conduct throughout: if the head of the institution reports that a scholar has failed to make satisfactory progress, or has been irregular in attendance without permission, the sanctioning authority may cancel the scholarship or withhold further payment for as long as it thinks fit (Revised guidelines, Scholarships for Students with Disabilities).

Continuation

Renewal conditions

Class IX to Class X is a two year run, and the second year turns on promotion rather than on paperwork alone. The award runs from the stage at which it is given to the end of the course, on good conduct and regularity in attendance, and it is renewed year on year provided the scholar moves up to the next higher class (Revised guidelines, Scholarships for Students with Disabilities).

Failing an examination bites harder here than one rung up. The concession that lets an award survive a first failure is written for the post-matric component and is not extended to this one, and any class is funded for a single year, so a student who sits Class IX again draws nothing for the repeat and comes back into the scheme only on reaching Class X (Revised guidelines, Scholarships for Students with Disabilities).

The second year still has to be claimed. Fresh and renewal cases are called for in the same UT notice each year, and the student chooses the renewal option on the portal (UT Administration of DNH & DD scholarship notice, 2023-24). Because renewals are settled before fresh cases compete for whatever is left, a renewal filed late loses a slot at both ends.

What you get

Award & benefits

Three payments make up the award, and only one of them changes with where the student sleeps.

The maintenance allowance is counted in months rather than paid as a flat year. It starts at 1st April or at the month of admission, whichever falls later, and stops with the month the examinations finish, holidays inside that span included; admission after the 20th day of a month pushes the first payment to the month after. A renewal resumes from the month following the last one paid, so long as the course has been continuous (Revised guidelines, Scholarships for Students with Disabilities).

The disability allowance is the one component that reads the certificate rather than the school record, and it does not move with hosteller status.

• Maintenance allowance of ₹500/- per month for day scholars.
• Maintenance allowance of ₹800/- per month for hostellers.
• Disability allowance of ₹4,000/- per annum for visually impaired/intellectual disability students.
• Disability allowance of ₹2,000/- per annum for other disabilities.
• Book allowance of ₹1,000/- per annum.

What to prepare

Documents required

myScheme's record for this scheme names the papers the portal will ask for. What it does not say is which officer in this UT signs each one, and that is where applications from Daman and Diu diverge from applications from Dadra & Nagar Haveli.

The same notice adds one instruction that costs applications every year: every compulsory document has to be uploaded in original. The income certificate carries a second condition from the scheme side, which the notice does not repeat. A self employed parent's income declaration has to take the form of a certificate from a revenue officer authorised by the state or union territory, and an employed parent has to obtain a consolidated certificate from the concerned revenue officer for any other source of income (Revised guidelines, Scholarships for Students with Disabilities).

Step by step

How to apply

Applications are called for only through the National Scholarship Portal, and the photograph, proof of age, disability certificate, parent's income certificate and last qualification certificate are all uploaded into the online system (Revised guidelines, Scholarships for Students with Disabilities).

The first two steps happen away from the application form itself, and the portal will not accept a submission until both are finished.

1. Generate the One Time Registration number. It is a 14 digit number issued against Aadhaar or the Aadhaar Enrolment ID, it lasts the student's entire academic career, and without it there is no application (National Scholarship Portal).
2. Give UDID consent on the UDID portal, then return to NSP.
3. Complete the form and attach every document to it. A student who cannot do this at home can use a Common Service Centre, where the whole activity including the reference number, biometric authentication, OTR generation and the completed form is charged at a fixed Rs 30 (National Scholarship Portal).
4. Have the school verify it. The head master or principal approves the application against the eligibility criteria and forwards it to the district and state authority, and only a school holding a valid UDISE or AISHE code and registered on NSP can do that (UT Administration of DNH & DD scholarship notice).
5. Wait for the nodal officers. The officer nominated by the territory oversees the applications and digitally signs the final list on PFMS, which is what releases the money (Revised guidelines, Scholarships for Students with Disabilities).

A minor without an Aadhaar number is the common blockage at step one. The UT's notice states that where an applicant under eighteen has no Aadhaar, the parent or legal guardian must provide theirs, and the child opens a joint bank account with that parent or guardian seeded to the guardian's Aadhaar (UT Administration of DNH & DD scholarship notice, 2023-24).

Tracking the application and the payment

An approved application and a credited account are separate events, and each has its own lookup. Sanction is checked through the Application Status login on NSP; the money is traced through the portal's Track Your Payment link, which hands off to the Know Your Payment search on the Public Financial Management System (National Scholarship Portal). When it is the file rather than the payment that has stalled, the portal also publishes a district-wise nodal officer lookup, which returns the officer holding a chosen scheme in a chosen state and district, and a grievance registration route for what neither the school nor the district will settle (National Scholarship Portal).

A student who belongs to DNH & DD but studies outside it should note that the recommending department changed in September 2025. A fresh application from a student resident in one state and studying in another is now recommended by the education or welfare department of the state where the student is studying, not of the home territory, and a renewal application needs no state nodal officer verification at all (DEPwD office memorandum).

How winners are picked

Selection process

The merit rule is not a marks rule, whatever an older copy of the guidelines may say. Selection is made on the percentage of disability recorded on the disability certificate, and where a certificate records specific learning disability without a figure, the percentage is taken as 40 for this purpose. A tie is broken by age, with the older candidate preferred. Half the slots each year are reserved for female candidates, and any that go unused because too few come forward or qualify are filled by suitable male candidates (Revised guidelines, Scholarships for Students with Disabilities). The text this replaced ranked candidates on the percentage of marks in the qualifying examination and reached for the disability percentage only to break a tie (Scheme of Scholarship for Students with Disabilities, the superseded text).

Being named on the sanctioned list does not close the file. Physical verification at block, district and state level has to cover at least 10% of units, chosen randomly through an algorithm (Revised guidelines, Scholarships for Students with Disabilities).

Fine print

Terms & conditions

A false statement costs more than the application. A student found to have obtained the scholarship that way has it cancelled forthwith, the amount paid is recovered at the department's discretion, and the student is blacklisted and debarred from scholarship under any scheme forever (Revised guidelines, Scholarships for Students with Disabilities).

Two limits sit around any argument with the department. Any litigation arising out of the scheme falls to the sole jurisdiction of the courts of the National Capital Territory of Delhi, not to a local court in Daman or Silvassa. And the department may change the scheme's provisions whenever it thinks necessary, with the approval of its Secretary and in consultation with the Financial Adviser concerned, which is exactly how the September 2025 changes reached the eligibility documents (Revised guidelines, Scholarships for Students with Disabilities).

The rule about holding more than one award has two layers set at different levels. This scheme carries the welfare based label on the portal's scheme list (Schemes on NSP), and the portal's rule for 2026-27 lets a student apply for one merit based scheme together with one or more welfare based schemes (National Scholarship Portal). That is a filing rule, not permission to draw two awards at once: for a student who is actually selected, the scheme's own bar on any other scholarship or stipend is the one that decides.

Get help

Contact

One office at Moti Daman holds the file for a student in Silvassa and a student in Diu alike, at the District Court Premises, Fort Area, Moti Daman 396220. Its 2024-25 notice routes queries from institutions to a scholarship cell on WhatsApp at 9537500045, and circulates the notice to schools through the Assistant Director of Education in each district, with a copy to each district Collector (UT Administration of DNH & DD scholarship notice).

A complaint of a different kind has a different address. The territory has appointed the Secretary (Social Welfare) as UT Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities under section 79 of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 (UT Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities notification). Where the grievance is discrimination on the ground of disability rather than a stuck scholarship file, rule 3 of the UT's 2021 rules requires that Commissioner to dispose of the complaint within sixty days (DNH & DD Rights of Persons with Disabilities Rules, 2021).

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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