Reimbursement of Tution Fee for SC/ST/OBC/Min students in Public Schools in Class I to XII(ROTFFSSIPSIC)

The window is fixed session by session, by departmental circular, which is why the public scheme record leaves both of its date fields empty. For the 2025-26 academic year the department invited applications for its state-funded and centrally sponsored schemes through the e-District portal with a last date of April 30, 2026 (The Times of India). That date has gone, and the department's own site still puts the guidelines of the scholarship schemes 2025-26 forward as its current scholarship document, with no later window posted beside them (Department for the Welfare of SC/ST/OBC).

Earlier rounds show the shape to plan for. The department's own notice for the 2019-20 session ran the window from 01/12/2019 to 31/03/2020 (apply for scholarship and fee reimbursement 2019-20), and the 2024-25 round was announced in November 2024 (The New Indian Express). Applications open partway through the session they cover and close in spring, which means the receipts you will be asked for are for the year the child is already sitting in.

The income ceiling is the figure applicants most often get wrong. The department's terms put it at family income not exceeding Rs 3.00 lakh per annum, supported by an income certificate issued by a competent authority of Delhi that is valid at the time the application is submitted (scholarship scheme guidelines 2025-26). Validity is a live condition rather than a formality, and the instructions issued to verifying schools tell them to confirm the uploaded certificate was valid on the date of filing (instructions for the institutions).

Two performance tests then sit on top, and the order joins them into one sentence: the fees are reimbursed only to students scoring 50% and above marks and having not less than 70% attendance in the preceding year (scholarship scheme guidelines 2025-26). Both look backwards, so a Class 6 claim is decided on the Class 5 record.

Hold those two figures against the scheme record printed under this section, which does not agree with itself. Its eligibility list sets a lower income ceiling and a higher attendance bar than the department does, while its own scheme description, its disbursement note and its official question set match the department's wording. Schools are told to verify an applicant as eligible per the guidelines available on the department's website (instructions for the institutions), so the guidelines' figures are the ones this page carries.

The caste certificate has a named issuing authority and a substitute rule worth reading before you queue anywhere. It must be an SC, ST or OBC certificate in the name of the student or the father, issued by the SDM or Deputy Commissioner (Revenue), GNCTD; where the caste certificate did not come from a Delhi competent authority, a Delhi domicile certificate has to be uploaded as well (scholarship scheme guidelines 2025-26).

Repeating a class ends the claim for that year. The terms bar repeaters in a particular class outright (scholarship scheme guidelines 2025-26), and because the marks and attendance tests already read the preceding year, a student who missed either has no separate appeal against them.

The bar that surprises families is the one on holding a central scholarship at the same time. Schools verifying these forms are instructed to ensure the applicant has not simultaneously applied on the National Scholarship Portal, and where the NSP application has already been approved by the educational institute, to reject the e-District application at institute level (instructions for the institutions). Filing on both portals for the same child in the same year produces a rejection, not two payments.

A second year of this reimbursement costs a fresh marksheet, a fresh attendance record and the current session's original fee receipts, because the guidelines hang all three on the application itself rather than on a running sanction (scholarship scheme guidelines 2025-26). The department reopens its scholarship schemes by circular each academic year, as it did for the 2024-25 session in November 2024 (The New Indian Express). A sanction in one year carries no standing in the next.

Three heads of the school bill are reimbursable and the terms name no others: tuition fees, lab fees and library fees, at a maximum of Rs 48,000 or the amount actually paid, whichever is less (scholarship scheme guidelines 2025-26). A family charged less than the ceiling under those heads gets back what it paid; a family charged more gets the ceiling and carries the difference.

The credit goes to the student, not the school. The account has to be in the student's name, active and seeded with the student's Aadhaar number, and a joint account with a parent or guardian is permitted (scholarship scheme guidelines 2025-26). That is why the fee has to be cleared first and the receipt produced afterwards, and why a dormant or unseeded account can hold up an otherwise approved claim.

A second ceiling is easy to miss because it never appears in the scheme summary. The school checking your form has to examine the fee you claimed against the fee structure approved for it by its own administrative department, and to upload that approved structure in its portal login (instructions for the institutions). A claim pitched above the approved structure is cut back to it before the welfare department ever sees the file.

The certificate list is short; the upload rules wrapped around it are what cost families the year. Every file has to be no larger than 100 KB and clearly legible (e-District Delhi FAQ), so a hurried phone photograph of a marksheet is a genuine rejection risk rather than a formatting quibble, and a document once uploaded cannot be removed.

Schools hold a limited rescue that parents rarely know about. Where a photograph or document has not uploaded successfully, the school authority may obtain it again from the student and upload it afresh, and where fee receipts are missing but the school's own records show the fee was received, the school may upload the remaining original receipts and count that paid fee while recommending the amount (instructions for the institutions). Ask the school before assuming a missing receipt has sunk the claim.

The department splits its schemes across two portals: its state schemes, this one among them, are applied for on the Delhi e-District portal, while its centrally sponsored schemes go through the National Scholarship Portal (Department for the Welfare of SC/ST/OBC, services and schemes). Applying on the wrong one is the most common wasted month in this scheme.

The scheme record printed under this section marks the mode offline and links to no application page. The department routes all five of its state schemes to e-District (Department for the Welfare of SC/ST/OBC, services and schemes), and the school-side manual describes verifying and rejecting these applications inside the e-District portal (instructions for the institutions), so the online route is the one set out here.

Everything runs through a citizen account on e-District. A student under 18 does not register separately: a parent or legal guardian adds the child's profile to their own registered account and applies through it (e-District Delhi FAQ). Once the form is finally submitted it cannot be edited, so the marksheet, the attendance record and the fee receipt are worth checking twice before the last click.

Tracking runs on the same portal, and it is worth doing early rather than at the close of the window. The status of a submitted application is visible from the Track Your Application link on the e-District home page, and the portal also answers an SMS sent as EDISTDL to 7738299899 (e-District Delhi FAQ). Where the verifying authority has raised an objection, its reason is published against your application online, and you can also collect it at the sub-division counter. A rejection is harder: once an application has been rejected no further action is possible on it, and the portal allows one re-application after the documents or procedure are completed (e-District Delhi FAQ). Because payment lands in the student's Aadhaar-seeded account rather than as a portal receipt, the bank credit is the last piece of status the portal will not show you.

Everything here turns on verification rather than competition. An application is tested against the eligibility conditions and then travels through a three-layer chain the department wrote into the online work-flow to cut leakages and wastages (instructions for the institutions).

What the head of school certifies is narrow and factual: that the applicant is a bona fide student of the school, and that the name, age, class, date of birth, category, gender and fee details match the school records (instructions for the institutions). The school login carries no general edit option, so where the form differs from the register the school types its own version into a separate text box instead of quietly overwriting yours.

The claim rests on documents that have to be correct at the moment of filing rather than at some point during the year. Original fee receipts for the current academic session are uploaded on the portal, so the reimbursement can only ever follow payment, and the income certificate has to be valid when the application is submitted (scholarship scheme guidelines 2025-26).

Corrections after submission are deliberately hard to make. A school may update an application only after receiving a requisition from the applicant or parents about a misspelling of credentials, must then change it strictly as per the supporting documents and facts, keep that requisition, and record the reason when it recommends the case onward (instructions for the institutions). Names that differ between the caste certificate, the bank account and the school register are best reconciled before the form is filed, not after.

A question about a particular application belongs at the school first, because that is where the file physically sits. Each institution updates its own profile on the portal with the name and mobile number of its nodal officer, its email and its approved fee structure, and schools without a login collect one from their administrative zone, while recognised institutes missing from the portal have to ask their administrative department to add them (instructions for the institutions).

Above that level, the scheme is administered from the department's office at B-Block, 2nd Floor, Vikas Bhawan, I.P. Estate, New Delhi-110002, which publishes 011-23379512 as its telephone number (Department for the Welfare of SC/ST/OBC).