Prime Minister's Scholarship Scheme for the Wards/Widows of Central Police Force Personnel(PMSSW/WCPFP)

Overview

About PMSSW/WCPFP

The monthly figure attached to this scheme, Rs 1,250 for a boy and Rs 1,500 for a girl, is the rate the Ministry of Home Affairs paid when it opened the scheme in the academic year 2006-07. It has been raised twice since. The same founding rulebook describes an application posted to a force headquarters, two self-addressed envelopes and a pre-receipt on a one rupee revenue stamp, and none of that is how a Central Armed Police Forces family applies today.

This is the Home Ministry's own scholarship for the families of its armed police, and its money has never come from an education budget. The Prime Minister announced 5,000 scholarships for the wards of ex-servicemen and widows of army and paramilitary personnel, including the Railway Protection Force, funded out of the interest income of the National Defence Fund. Of those, 1,000 were allotted to the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Ministry of Railways together, and that block was divided on the strength of the forces into 910 for the Central Police Forces under MHA and 90 for the Railway Protection Force, which the Ministry of Railways runs as a separate scheme (MHA scheme guidelines).

The document carrying that split is titled for Central Police Force personnel. Every guideline the ministry has issued since is titled for Central Armed Police Forces and Assam Rifles, and from the academic session 2019-20 the same scheme was extended to the dependent wards of state and union territory police personnel martyred during terror or Naxal attacks (revised guidelines). CPF and CAPF are the same forces under two labels, and a family that finds only the older label has not found a lapsed scheme.

The scheme long ago outgrew the block of places that founding note divided up. By the end of 2023-24 it had paid 49,189 awards against a sanctioned Rs 1,39,96,72,276, on the Home Ministry's own count in the Lok Sabha in March 2025 (Press Information Bureau). Set that against the loss it exists to answer: 199 CAPF and Assam Rifles personnel laid down their lives in the line of duty across 2020 to 2024, and it is their families the order of preference puts at the head of the queue (Press Information Bureau).

Who runs it

Provider

At a glance

Key details

Calendar

Important dates

The portal fixes the dates each academic year, and for the current cycle they are published against the Ministry of Home Affairs listing.

What happens after the nodal officer's deadline carries no published date for this cycle. The last schedule the ministry printed with a date against every stage, for the academic year 2022-23, ran merit list preparation and lot generation from 1st to 10th December, the Resettlement and Welfare Directorate's processing of the sanction from the Prime Minister's Office from 11th to 20th December, payment file generation from 21st to 31st December, disbursement from 1st to 15th January, and the Prime Minister's letters by 31st January (WARB guidelines). Treat that as the shape of the tail, not as a commitment for the current cycle.

The 30 November date on the older record is a different deadline entirely. It was the date by which each force had to call for applications from its own people, with the selected files reaching WARB by 15 December and the final list going to the ministry by 31 December (MHA scheme guidelines). Reading it as a student deadline is a common and expensive mistake.

Who can apply

Eligibility criteria

Four groups qualify: widows and wards of personnel who died in harness, wards of ex-personnel disabled on duty, wards of ex-personnel holding gallantry awards, and wards and widows of retired or serving personnel below officer rank. A widow is an applicant in her own name here, not merely the guardian who signs for a child, and that is unusual enough to be worth saying plainly.

The rank ceiling is the part most families read wrongly. It runs up to Subedar Major or Inspector, but it binds only the ordinary categories. MHA's current rulebook states there is no rank restriction at all for the top five priority categories, and it separately admits the wards of Assistant Commandants who hold that rank locally while still drawing an Inspector's salary (revised guidelines).

Marital status has stopped mattering. The founding note opened the scheme to widows and unmarried wards while adding that a later marriage or remarriage would not disqualify anyone; the current guidelines drop the qualifier and simply say applicants are eligible irrespective of marital status (WARB guidelines).

Two limits sit behind all of it. The academic bar is 60 per cent in the qualifying examination, which the current rulebook widens from Class 12 alone to a diploma or a graduation degree depending on the course applied for, and the scholarship is admissible to only two children per family, so the application form asks for the particulars of every child. What neither rulebook contains is a household income test: whose ward or widow you are, the rank the parent held, and the marks on one mark sheet are the entire qualification.

Who cannot apply

Exclusions

The scheme record publishes no exclusion list at all. The current guidelines publish a long one, and two entries on it catch families who read the eligibility test and stopped there (WARB guidelines).

The first is the civilian line. The scheme is meant for the wards and widows of uniformed and combat personnel, and the wards of civilian employees of the same forces are excluded by name. A clerk, storekeeper or tradesman borne on a CAPF unit's civilian strength does not bring his children inside this scheme, however long the service.

The second bites after the award, not before it. The trigger is a fresh admission taken in a later academic year on the back of a change of course or college, and once that happens the rejection is permanent rather than a suspension anyone can appeal out of. The rest of the list is conventional: correspondence and distance learning courses, applicants already drawing another scholarship or stipend, applicants who have held this scholarship once before, diploma courses and master's programmes other than MBA and MCA, institutions not approved under the UGC Act or not recognised by the relevant regulator, and study abroad.

Continuation

Renewal conditions

Renewal is annual and it is earned on marks. The award continues only where the student passes each subsequent academic year of the professional course with at least 50 per cent, against the 60 per cent asked at entry (WARB guidelines).

There is one concession the founding rulebook did not have. Where the renewal application is late because of a delay on the candidate's own part, a grace period of one year may be entertained, which is the difference between a missed portal window and a lost degree's worth of support.

A year's renewals are granted in addition to that year's fresh awards rather than out of them, so nobody in their second year is ranked against a school-leaver. What the current rulebook lists for a CAPF renewal is a single document, the service certificate issued on the scheme's Annexure A proforma by the head of office where the parent is still serving (WARB guidelines). The founding checklist for the same thing ran to six items, among them a certificate from the institution that the student had not dropped a year and a declaration cum pre-receipt signed on a one rupee revenue stamp (MHA scheme guidelines). What has survived from that rulebook is the one-programme limit, which stops a person who has held this scholarship for one degree from claiming it again for another.

What you get

Award & benefits

The rate has moved twice in the scheme's life, and the record's figures are the first of three slabs.

At the rate in force, a selected girl receives Rs 36,000 and a selected boy Rs 30,000 for the year. The payment is annual rather than monthly, released after selection, and the split between boys and girls holds because the fresh awards themselves are reserved in equal numbers for each (Press Information Bureau).

Tenure is written as a ceiling now rather than a range. The founding note gave two to five years as approved by the regulatory body (MHA scheme guidelines); the current rulebook says up to five years, depending on how long the course actually runs, and adds a cap the older document never carried. An integrated ME, MTech or MPharma draws the money for its initial three or four years only, because the award follows the first professional degree and nothing after it (WARB guidelines). Payment reaches the student through the Public Financial Management System under Direct Benefit Transfer, into an Aadhaar-seeded account. Where the founding rulebook had WARB informing the selected applicants itself, a fresh selectee now also receives a personal letter from the Prime Minister in an appropriate language, sent out through WARB and the forces.

• Amount of Scholarship: ₹1250/- per month for boys
• ₹1500/- per month for girls
• Duration of the Scholarship: Two to five years as approved by the concerned regulatory body for the programme.

What to prepare

Documents required

The paper-era list on the record is long because everything had to be proved on paper at once. The online process asks for less, and it asks by category (WARB guidelines).

A fresh applicant uploads an attested scan of the qualifying examination mark sheet, a service certificate in the prescribed Annexure A format issued by the head of office where the parent is still serving, and then whichever proof matches the category claimed. A pension payment order, discharge certificate or discharge book is mandatory for categories A to F; a disability certificate for the two disability categories; a death certificate where the personnel died; and the gallantry award certificate where that is the ground.

The postage is the tell. The scheme's published FAQ answers flatly that no hard copies of documents go anywhere and that PMSS is a completely online process (PMSS FAQ), which retires the two self-addressed envelopes, the account-payee cheque and the pre-receipt signed on a one rupee revenue stamp that the record still lists. A family working down that checklist will spend a day assembling paper the portal has no field for.

Step by step

How to apply

The record's route sends each applicant to the concerned force headquarters and warns that applications reaching WARB or the ministry directly will not be entertained, because the checklist has to be verified by the force. The route survives in substance; only the paper is gone. The application is now filed on the National Scholarship Portal at scholarships.gov.in, under the Ministry of Home Affairs listing for Central Armed Police Forces and Assam Rifles (scheme listing).

Four desks touch the form after it is submitted. The college or institute verifies the credentials and recommends it; a Board of Officers nominated by the force verifies the service certificate and the category claimed; WARB consolidates what the forces send up and prepares the renewal list; and the portal generates the merit list before MHA processes the sanction from the Prime Minister's Office (WARB guidelines).

Tracking runs off the registration number the portal issues on submission, which doubles as the user ID for the status of both the application and the receipt of the money (WARB guidelines). A system generated text message reaches the registered mobile number when the application goes in and again if it is selected (PMSS FAQ), and the guidelines make the mobile number and email address mandatory for exactly that reason: the verification chain has no other way to tell an applicant that something is wrong.

Two repair windows decide whether a spoilt form can be saved, and both close early. An application marked defective has to be corrected and resubmitted before the verification deadline, which the portal sets at 15-11-2026 for this cycle (scheme listing); a withdrawal and fresh application is only possible until the force nodal officer's second-level verification (PMSS FAQ). Bank details may be updated once and once only, at any stage after final submission, so a payment that fails on a wrong account number has a single repair and no second attempt (WARB guidelines).

How winners are picked

Selection process

Fresh applications are not read in the order they arrive. They are shortlisted against a seven-rung order of preference and then, inside each rung, on the percentage scored in the qualifying examination (WARB guidelines).

The rungs themselves were re-ordered when the scheme was revised, and the change matters to anyone reading the older record. Gallantry award holders sat third in the founding order; they now sit fifth, and the third rung belongs to deaths attributable to government service, which the revised guidelines widened to include casualties during the conduct of election duty. The last rung, the wards of serving personnel below officer rank, is expressly subject to availability, which is where most ordinary serving families sit.

Equal marks are settled by two further rules, and the guidelines state the blunter of them: where the merit list shows the same percentage, preference goes to the ward of the junior most personnel, the least earning of them (WARB guidelines). The published FAQ sets the same idea out as an ordered list, putting the older candidate ahead first and the lower parental rank second (PMSS FAQ).

No force holds a reserved share. The guidelines state there is no fixed quota for any particular force, so a CRPF applicant and a Sashastra Seema Bal applicant are ranked in one list (WARB guidelines). That is continuity rather than change: the founding note used the strength of the forces to split the block between two ministries and then stopped, leaving nothing set aside inside the Home Ministry's own share.

Fine print

Terms & conditions

The award can be pulled back at any point, before selection or long after it. Where ineligibility is detected at any stage, the scholarship is cancelled without notice, disciplinary action follows, and the applicant is barred from every centrally sponsored scholarship for five years (WARB guidelines). Fraud is dealt with separately again: a candidature found at any stage to rest on false documents or a suppressed fact stands rejected automatically, and the money already drawn goes back with interest on top of it.

The founding rulebook was harsher in one respect and is worth knowing for anyone who held an award under it: a false statement forfeited the scholarship and shut the door on any future application from that ex-CPF person or widow, not only from the student.

Holding another award is a disqualification rather than a top-up question. The current guidelines exclude applicants already receiving any other scholarship, stipend or financial assistance; the older rulebook capped the combined assistance at the value of this grant instead. On admissibility, the decision of the Joint Secretary (Police-II) is final, and the ministry reserves the right to modify the guidelines as it needs to.

Get help

Contact

The Welfare and Rehabilitation Board is the body the record names as the implementing agency, and it takes calls on 011-23063111 and mail at secywarb-mha@nic.in (WARB guidelines). Service-related questions, which is most of what goes wrong with these applications, belong with the nodal officer of the force concerned; the contact list is annexed to the guidelines. For a problem with the portal itself rather than the claim, the portal's own helpdesk is the right desk. The older guidelines also list the Resettlement and Welfare Directorate at ic-rw@nic.in.

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