Pre-Matric Scholarship for the Students of Minority Castes(PMSSMC)

Overview

About PMSSMC

The Pre-Matric Scholarship for the Students of Minority Castes is Gujarat's money, not the Ministry of Minority Affairs', and that single fact settles the marks question, the income test, the kind of school a child has to be sitting in and the office that answers the phone. Gujarat calls its pre-matric awards pre-S.S.C. scholarships and runs one per social category, so the minority version sits in a menu beside near-identical awards for other groups. Choosing the wrong line costs real money, because the difference cannot be claimed back afterwards.

This is state money, run by the Director, Developing Castes Welfare, the wing of the Social Justice and Empowerment Department that covers socially and educationally backward classes, economically backward classes, minorities, and nomadic and denotified tribes. Its educational scheme list carries the award as Pre S.S.C Scholarship (S.E.B.C, E.B.C and Minority), directly above the matching award for nomadic and denotified tribes and far down the same list from the Government of India's own pre-matric scholarship for minority communities, which this directorate also implements (Educational schemes, Director, Developing Castes Welfare). Gujarat's A-to-Z scheme directory goes further and splits the award into separate entries for minority, socially and educationally backward, economically backward and nomadic and denotified students, printing an identical rate table and an identical income rule under each of them (Gujarat scheme directory).

Inside that group the minority share is not a rounding error. The directorate's own page for the scheme counts 3,53,168 minority students against 20,93,796 socially and educationally backward, 4,09,368 economically backward and 2,37,055 nomadic and denotified, and puts no year over that column. The money row beside it is dated: for 2018-19 the minority provision was Rs 2000.00 lakh, against which Rs 2017.34 lakh was allotted and the same Rs 2017.34 lakh spent (Pre S.S.C Scholarship (S.E.B.C, E.B.C and Minority), Director, Developing Castes Welfare).

Who it reaches is narrower than the name suggests. The child has to be on the roll of a government or grant-in-aid school, so a minority family that has moved a child into a private unaided school falls outside this award at any income. That is a line the central minority scheme does not draw, since its guidelines cover studies in a government or a private school alike (Scheme of Pre-Matric Scholarship for students belonging to the Minority Communities, Ministry of Minority Affairs). What Gujarat pays here is attendance support, not a sum that meets a fee bill.

Who runs it

Provider

At a glance

Key details

Calendar

Important dates

The scheme record publishes neither an opening nor a closing date, and Gujarat runs no standing annual calendar for this award that a parent could mark. Windows are announced by notice on the state scholarship portal, one scheme family at a time, and the notices standing on that board are post-matric ones.

No pre-S.S.C. window sits there, and that absence is the honest answer to the deadline question. For a standard 1 to 10 child the date arrives through the school and the district developing-castes office rather than off a portal banner.

Who can apply

Eligibility criteria

The state award asks nothing about marks, and below standard 9 it asks nothing about money either. Both of those are the sharpest lines between it and the centrally sponsored pre-matric scholarship for minority communities that the same directorate implements, which pays only a student who scored at least 50% in the previous year's annual examination and whose parents earn no more than Rs 1,00,000 a year (Govt. of India's Pre-matric Scholarship for Minority Communities). A minority child in a Gujarat government school who has never come near that bar is still inside the state scheme. An income certificate only starts to matter in standards 9 and 10, and even there the ceiling the scheme record sets is many times the one the directorate's older page still prints (Gujarat scheme directory).

Belonging to a minority community is proved on paper rather than declared. The directorate publishes its own application form for a minority certificate (Forms, Director, Developing Castes Welfare), and the communities Gujarat names on its page for the central minority scheme are Muslim, Christian, Parsis, Sikh, Buddhist and Jain (Govt. of India's Pre-matric Scholarship for Minority Communities). Whichever of the directorate's scholarships a family applies under, only a certificate issued by a competent authority may be uploaded (SEBC post-matric scholarship guidelines, Director, Developing Castes Welfare).

Who cannot apply

Exclusions

Nothing is published. Neither the scheme record nor the directorate's page for the award names a single disqualifying condition, which leaves the eligibility tests carrying the whole load.

What is worth knowing is which restrictions do not travel across from the scheme this one is confused with. The Ministry of Minority Affairs' pre-matric guidelines cap a family at two students, allow a student only one Central Government scholarship among those meant for Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe, other backward class and minority students, and let a state cancel an award and recover the money where it was obtained by a false statement (Scheme of Pre-Matric Scholarship for students belonging to the Minority Communities, Ministry of Minority Affairs). Gujarat has issued no equivalent for its own pre-S.S.C. award, so a family should not read those limits into it.

Continuation

Renewal conditions

No renewal rule is published for this award under its own name. What the directorate does publish is how renewal behaves inside Digital Gujarat for its post-S.S.C. applicants: a student who drew the scholarship in the previous year is put into Renewal mode automatically and is not meant to file fresh, and only when that renewal form fails to appear should a fresh application be made for the current year (SEBC post-matric scholarship guidelines, Director, Developing Castes Welfare). That sheet was written for the directorate's post-matric schemes, so read it as portal behaviour rather than as a rule drafted with a primary-school pupil in mind.

What you get

Award & benefits

Two official sets of figures are in circulation for the same award and they do not agree. The directorate's scheme page still prints the older slab, and next to it an income ceiling of Rs 47,000 for rural families and Rs 68,000 for urban ones at standards 9 and 10 (Pre S.S.C Scholarship (S.E.B.C, E.B.C and Minority), Director, Developing Castes Welfare).

The state's own A-to-Z scheme directory publishes a higher figure than that for every one of those rows, alongside a far higher income ceiling, and those are the figures the scheme record carries (Gujarat scheme directory). Neither page says which supersedes which. The directorate's version sits on the same screen as a 2018-19 budget table, which is the only dating either page offers (Pre S.S.C Scholarship (S.E.B.C, E.B.C and Minority), Director, Developing Castes Welfare). A school office quoting the smaller number is reading the page nobody refreshed, and the district developing-castes office is where a family gets that settled.

One thing the two versions do share is the logic underneath. Rates are set by standard and by sex, never by marks and never by household income below standard 9, and both step the girls' rate up from standard 6. What they invert is the age gradient: on the directorate's older table a child in standard 9 drew less than a child in standard 1, while in the set the scheme record carries the final school years pay the most of all.

• Scholarship Amounts: Boys (Class 1st to 8th): ₹750/- per year- Boys (Class 9th to 10th): ₹1,000/- per year- Girls (Class 1st to 5th): ₹500/- per year- Girls (Class 6th to 10th): ₹1,000/- per year

What to prepare

Documents required

The caste certificate the record asks for means, here, a minority certificate from the competent authority rather than anything the school issues, and the directorate publishes the application form for one on its own forms page (Forms, Director, Developing Castes Welfare). The income certificate is the item a family in the lower standards can be surprised to find it does not need, since no income test applies below standard 9; from standard 9 onward it is the paper the whole application turns on.

The bank page repays more attention than it usually gets. Whatever is scanned has to show the account number, the IFSC and the branch, whether that comes off the opening page of the passbook or off a cancelled cheque; after a bank merger, only the successor bank's details will do. Nothing uploaded may be a photocopy of a photocopy: the scan is made from the original. The consequences of a wrong digit sit squarely with the applicant: a scholarship credited into somebody else's account because a number was mistyped is the student's own responsibility, and an account gone dormant or short of a current KYC will not take the credit at all (SEBC post-matric scholarship guidelines, Director, Developing Castes Welfare).

Step by step

How to apply

Online only, and a form filed anywhere else does not count. The directorate's instruction is that no student may apply for its scholarships by any route other than Scholarship Services inside Digital Gujarat, and that none of this money is ever paid out offline (SEBC post-matric scholarship guidelines, Director, Developing Castes Welfare).

For this award, that is where the published trail stops. The Gujarat State Scholarship Portal's downloads carry guidelines for the post-matric schemes of the Scheduled Caste, SEBC and Scheduled Tribe wings and nothing at all for the pre-S.S.C. awards (Gujarat State Scholarship Portal). A standard 1 to 10 child therefore has no manual written for them, and the school is the working instruction: the online form drops into the school's own login, and the printout with the documents is handed across the same counter.

What the post-S.S.C. sheet sets out about the portal itself holds for any of the directorate's schemes. Once a financial year is chosen, the schemes a child is eligible for appear under the Director Developing Caste Welfare heading. The form then works through registration, bank, academic and disability details, the attachments and a passport-size photograph, and closes with Verify Mobile Number and Confirm and Final Submit. An application never finally submitted, or whose printout never reached the school, is not taken up (SEBC post-matric scholarship guidelines, Director, Developing Castes Welfare).

Checking a Pending or Past Application

Nothing about this is public. A family reads the form's state only from inside the Digital Gujarat account it was filed from, under the My Applications heading (Digital Gujarat, frequently asked questions). Under Scholarship Services the financial-year drop-down reaches back over earlier years, which is how a parent confirms that last year's award was actually recorded before this year's form is started. Keep the registered number working, because when it is lost or switched off the mobile number in the profile can only be changed after identity is established at the district office. Portal faults themselves go to the help desk on 18002335500 (SEBC post-matric scholarship guidelines, Director, Developing Castes Welfare).

How winners are picked

Selection process

There is no selection to survive. Neither the scheme record nor the directorate publishes a merit list, a quota or a ranking rule for the state award, which reads as an entitlement for every eligible child on a government or grant-in-aid roll rather than as a competition.

That is the reverse of the scheme it gets mistaken for. The Ministry fixes the number of pre-matric minority scholarships available in a year, so its guidelines have to lay down a preference: weightage goes to poverty rather than to marks, and where two applicants report the same income the senior by date of birth takes the place (Scheme of Pre-Matric Scholarship for students belonging to the Minority Communities, Ministry of Minority Affairs).

Fine print

Terms & conditions

Gujarat publishes no terms sheet for the pre-S.S.C. awards. What exists is the directorate's set of conditions for its own scholarship services on Digital Gujarat, and those are the ones that bite in practice. Only certificates issued by a competent authority may be uploaded, and only scans of the originals. A student who applies under the wrong scheme by mistake cannot claim the difference later, which matters here precisely because the minority, SEBC, EBC and nomadic and denotified versions of the same award sit next to one another in one list. A wrong bank account number is the applicant's own responsibility, and the account has to be operational and current on KYC. Information filled in falsely or held back does more than fail the form: the directorate's stated response is to blacklist the student from the scholarship, and it asks families not to try a duplicate application (SEBC post-matric scholarship guidelines, Director, Developing Castes Welfare).

Get help

Contact

For a child in the primary standards the school comes first, because the paper set is filed there and the online form lands in the school's login. Above the school sits the district developing-castes office, which is where eligibility, the minority certificate and an award that never arrived get settled. The scheme itself is held a level higher again, by the Director, Developing Caste Welfare in Gandhinagar, on +91 79 23253245; the office is Block No. 4, third floor, Dr. Jivraj Mehta Bhavan, and it is the one named at the foot of every scheme page the directorate publishes (Director, Developing Castes Welfare). Anything that is purely a portal fault, a login that will not open or an OTP that never lands, goes to the help desk on 18002335500 (SEBC post-matric scholarship guidelines, Director, Developing Castes Welfare).

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.

Explore more

Related scholarships

References

Sources