Pre- Matric Scholarships Scheme for Scheduled Castes & Others(PMSSSC)

Overview

About PMSSSC

The Pre-Matric Scholarships Scheme for Scheduled Castes and Others carries a word in its name that does most of the work and almost none of the explaining. Others is not a second caste category. It is a separate component with its own class range, its own certificate and no income test at all, sitting inside the same centrally sponsored scheme as the Scheduled Caste award. Which component a child falls under decides how much reaches the bank account, and from which class.

Two older schemes live inside this one. The Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment had been paying a pre-matric scholarship to Scheduled Caste students and, quite separately, a much older one to the children of parents in unclean and hazardous occupations. Because the two target groups overlapped so heavily, they were merged from 2021-22 into a single centrally sponsored scheme and kept apart only as Component 1 and Component 2, so that each still generates its own data for planning (scheme guidelines, Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment). The Scheduled Caste side of it has been confined to class 9 and 10 students since 2012-13, which is why nothing in this scheme reaches an SC child in Class 8 (Change in Pre-Matric Scholarship Scheme, PIB).

What the merger did not do is blend the two eligibility tests. Component 1 kept the Scheduled Caste test, the Classes IX and X range and the Rs 2.50 lakh parental income ceiling, while the Ministry still records the income ceiling for Component 2 as none at all (income ceiling, Department of Social Justice and Empowerment). A state notice headed pre-matric scholarship for SC students is therefore describing only half of what this scheme pays for, and a family reading it can be eligible under the half the notice never mentions.

The merged scheme is large and current. During 2025-26 central assistance of Rs 562.36 crore was released under it, benefiting 26,79,049 students, the Minister of State for Social Justice and Empowerment told the Lok Sabha in a written reply on 22 July 2026 (Press Information Bureau).

Who runs it

Provider

At a glance

Key details

Calendar

Important dates

Ask when applications close and the honest answer is the name of a state. The guidelines hand the announcement to every state and union territory, by advertisement in the leading newspapers of the state and on its own website or scholarship portal, starting from April, and set no national closing date, so the myScheme record has none to show.

One thing a reader in 2026 should know about that calendar: it comes from guidelines the Ministry issued in March 2022 for the period 2021-2022 to 2025-26, and the department's scheme page still offers that document and no later one (scheme guidelines). Nothing published there announces either an extension or a lapse. What is on the record is that the Ministry was still reporting disbursement under the scheme to the Lok Sabha in July 2026 (Press Information Bureau).

Who can apply

Eligibility criteria

Both components are open to nationals of India studying full time, and there the two part company.

Component 1 is the Scheduled Caste award: a student in Class IX or X, belonging to a Scheduled Caste, whose parent or guardian earns not more than Rs 2.50 lakh a year from all sources (conditions of eligibility, Department of Social Justice and Empowerment).

Component 2 is the Others. It turns on a parent's or guardian's occupation and not on caste, religion or money: children in Classes I to X qualify where a parent or guardian is a manual scavenger, a tanner, a flayer, a waste picker or a person engaged in hazardous cleaning, with the first and the last of those read as the Manual Scavengers Act 2013 defines them. In place of an income certificate the family produces an occupation certificate from the district social welfare officer, an identified officer of the local body or civic agency, or another authority the state government designates (scheme guidelines).

One condition sits above both components and decides more borderline cases than either eligibility test. A school with no valid UDISE code takes the child out of the scheme whatever the family's caste or occupation, because the guidelines confine the award to government schools and to private schools recognised by a state government, a union territory administration or a central board and holding that code (scheme guidelines).

Who cannot apply

Exclusions

Getting the award on a false statement costs far more than the money. Cancellation is immediate and the state may recover what it has already paid, but the real penalty outlives the schooling: the guidelines put the student on a blacklist that bars scholarship under any scheme forever, and require the portal to be built so that the block holds the next time that student tries to apply (scheme guidelines).

Three quieter bars catch far more applicants. A scholar under this scheme cannot hold another educational scholarship for study in Classes I to X, and a student who is awarded one has to pick one of the two and tell the awarding authority, through the head of the institution, which. A year repeated is a year unfunded, because the guidelines pay for any given class once, so a child who sits Class IX again carries no scholarship into the second attempt and under Component 2 the same rule reaches as far down as Class I. And a student who discontinues the studies for which the award was made during the course of the year is liable to refund it, again at the state government's discretion. The myScheme record leaves its exclusions field empty; these bars sit in the guidelines rather than on the record.

Continuation

Renewal conditions

A Class IX award carries into Class X without a fresh form. Renewal is automatic on promotion to the next class, once the school confirms the student has rejoined as the same hosteller or day scholar, and the guidelines explicitly require the portal to be built so that there is no need for the student to apply for renewal at all (scheme guidelines). Under Component 1 that mechanism has to work once, between Class IX and Class X. Under Component 2 it can be asked to work nine times over.

Attendance is what actually stops a renewal. The guidelines set the bar at 75% in every academic year, alongside satisfactory academic performance, and want that figure read off an Aadhaar based attendance system; until one exists the institution uploads the attendance of every scholarship holder into the portal each month (scheme guidelines). Aadhaar authentication itself becomes compulsory at renewal for anyone who did not provide it at admission.

Automatic renewal is newer than it looks, and it was asked for. When the Ministry's evaluators reported on the Scheduled Caste pre-matric scholarship for 2019-20, one of their recommendations was still that the application be taken only once, when the student enters class 9, and the sanction then made automatic on passing to class 10 without insisting on a renewal application (summary report, Aravali Institute of Development Research for the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment).

What you get

Award & benefits

Since 2022-23 the scheme pays one consolidated academic allowance for the year rather than a monthly stipend or a fee reimbursement, and the hosteller rate is the only place where the two components pay differently (rate of scholarship, Department of Social Justice and Empowerment).

A Divyang student is paid 10% more than the rate in the relevant row. The guidelines read disability as the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 defines it, and leave the certifying authority to be designated by the appropriate government (scheme guidelines).

Whether that rate is enough money has been examined by the Ministry itself. Its outcome based evaluation of the pre-matric SC scholarship, which surveyed 50,000 students in Punjab, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal and Karnataka for the year 2019-20, found nearly 44 percent of them saying the scholarship was not sufficient, and suggested raising it to Rs 5,000 a year (summary report, Aravali Institute of Development Research for the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment). The same survey logged the timing problem sitting behind the amount: the money arrived in one payment for the year, mostly after the year it was meant to cover was already over.

• The students shall be given a consolidated academic allowance, as follows: Day Scholar:- ₹3,500/- per annum1. Hosteller: -
• Component 1- ₹7,000/- per annum
• Component 2- ₹8,000/- per annum (For Class III-X)
• In addition, a 10% extra allowance shall be given to Divyang (Disabled) students.

What to prepare

Documents required

On paper this scheme asks a family to upload nothing. The portal is not allowed to accept any document or certificate at all; income, domicile and caste records are meant to be checked automatically against the databases that issued them, through DigiLocker or an equivalent mechanism, with the Aadhaar number as the link (scheme guidelines).

Which paperwork still decides the case depends on the component. Component 1 turns on a caste certificate and an income certificate. Component 2 turns on the occupation certificate from the designated officer, and on no income document whatsoever. Both need the school's own admission and academic record and a bank account seeded to the student's or parent's Aadhaar, and the list carried on the myScheme record below is what a state portal will still expect a family to be able to produce.

The distance between that design and the counter is on the record. The Ministry's evaluators recommended that the number of documents required for an application be cut to the minimum, and state officials told them the requirement of a notary for the income certificate should be relaxed (summary report, Aravali Institute of Development Research).

Step by step

How to apply

Registration and application happen in two different places, in that order, and this is the single most misunderstood thing about the scheme. April is when the National Scholarship Portal opens for it, but what a family does there is register; those details then travel to the state, and the form itself is filled on the state's own portal (how to apply, Department of Social Justice and Empowerment).

Which state portal that is depends on where the child is domiciled, and some states never send a family to a second screen at all: a state already running an online portal that meets the prescribed parameters may keep it, provided it shares data with the National Scholarship Portal on a real time basis (scheme guidelines). Karnataka runs the whole pre-matric side that way, on a State Scholarship Portal with its own login for Classes 1 to 10 (Karnataka State Scholarship Portal). So before hunting for a form, find out which of the two portals your state actually uses for this scheme.

Inside the school, the timing is pinned to the admission date. Admission day is application day: the guidelines make the school responsible for seeing that the claim is filed online for every child it admits, on the date of that admission, and for confirming there and then that the child really is enrolled with it (scheme guidelines). A family waiting for a circular has already missed a step the guidelines assign to the school rather than to them.

A state that still verifies by hand gets 30 days to finish. If it does not, the guidelines provide for presumed approval rather than a silent rejection, which is worth quoting back at any office that has held an application longer than that (scheme guidelines).

Three separate things can stall, and the portal keeps them apart. The National Scholarship Portal's home page carries an application status check, a track your payment check and an Aadhaar seeding status check, with one helpdesk for the portal and a different one for PFMS (National Scholarship Portal). Payment reaches the student's or parent's account by direct benefit transfer only, preferably over the Aadhaar Payment Bridge once the number has been checked against the NPCI mapper, with states releasing through PFMS. The central share is paid to the beneficiary only after the concerned state government has released its own share, so an application that reads verified but unpaid is usually waiting on the state rather than on the Ministry.

How winners are picked

Selection process

Eligibility is the whole test. Nobody is scored against anybody else, and what the guidelines ask of a state instead is targeting: every SC student under the income ceiling is eligible, but the state is directed to go looking in mission mode for the poorest of them, meaning households carrying three or more deprivations under SECC-2011 and households where one or both parents are illiterate, and to run a campaign every March or April to find such children and mentor them into the scheme (scheme guidelines).

Two ceilings sit above all of that. A state cannot award more scholarships in a year than the highest count from the past 3 years for which a database is available, and the centre and state shares are then worked out on that year's demand. Checking is by sample rather than in full: physical verification at state, district and block level has to cover at least 10% of institutions or students, drawn randomly through an algorithm (scheme guidelines). States are separately ranked each year on how promptly they pay, how far they reach the poorest households, the academic outcomes of their scholarship holders, and how far they have implemented Aadhaar based attendance and digitised the certificates that decide eligibility.

Fine print

Terms & conditions

The scholarship is for studies in India only and is awarded by the government of the state or union territory where the student is domiciled, which is what makes state residence, and not the location of the school, the deciding fact for a child studying away from home.

Aadhaar has been notified as an identity document for scholarship schemes under this Ministry's notification number 428 dated 16 February 2017, but a failed Aadhaar authentication cannot by itself cost a student the award: the guidelines require that such an applicant be permitted to establish identity by other means, so that genuine claimants are not deprived (scheme guidelines).

Two budgets pay for one scholarship, which is why a state's delay stalls the central half as well. The sharing is 60:40 between the centre and the states, 90:10 for the North Eastern states along with Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh, and 100:0 in union territories without a legislature (Year End Review 2025, Department of Social Justice and Empowerment). Running the scheme, including the portal, the publicity and the social audits, has to fit inside 1% of its annual cost (scheme guidelines).

Get help

Contact

The first point of contact is the school, not the Ministry. Every institution is required to have a grievance redressal officer responsible for taking up a student's complaint with the appropriate authority, and a grievance left unresolved at the institution within its time frame escalates automatically to the district and then the state level; the complaint itself can be lodged on the scholarship portal or through a mobile app (scheme guidelines).

Portal problems belong somewhere else. The National Scholarship Portal publishes its own helpdesk and a separate PFMS helpdesk, along with scheme wise and district wise lists of nodal officers (National Scholarship Portal). Sanction and payment run through neither of those doors. The award is released by the welfare department of the child's home state, so an application that has cleared verification but shows no money is chased there and not in Delhi.

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