Rural Girls’ Incentive Scheme(RGIS)

Overview

About RGIS

Tamil Nadu has run this incentive since 1999-2000, and it moves more money than the per-girl figure suggests: Rs.15.10 crore reached 2,39,207 girl students in 2024-2025, and Rs.17.25 crore was allotted for 2025-2026 (Policy Note 2025-2026, Backward Classes, Most Backward Classes and Minorities Welfare Department). The department has since allocated Rs.13.41 crore for 2026-2027 (Policy Note 2026-2027, Backward Classes, Most Backward Classes and Minorities Welfare Department).

The amount per girl is small and deliberately so. A girl in the 3rd, 4th or 5th standard gets Rs.500 for the year; in the 6th standard it doubles to Rs.1,000, which the department ties to holding girls in school as they move up into high school (Policy Note 2025-2026). It is filed among the scholarship schemes the state funds entirely, with no central share (Policy Note 2026-2027).

Two conditions narrow it sharply. It is written for Most Backward Classes and Denotified Communities and not for Backward Classes, and it runs in every district except Chennai, in government and government-aided schools in rural areas (Scholarship Schemes, Backward Classes, Most Backward Classes and Minorities Welfare Department). A girl in a rural aided school in Ariyalur clears the geography; a girl of the same community in a Chennai school does not.

Administratively the scheme belongs to the Directorate of Most Backward Classes and Denotified Communities Welfare, where the D Section holds rural girls incentive work alongside the job-oriented schemes and scholarship sanction (Right to Information manual, Departments of Backward Classes Welfare and Most Backward Classes and Denotified Communities Welfare). On the ground the department works through district Collectors, each assisted by a District Backward Classes and Minorities Welfare Officer (Scholarship Schemes, BC, MBC and Minorities Welfare Department).

Who runs it

Provider

At a glance

Key details

Calendar

Important dates

No opening or closing date is published for this incentive. The school controls the timing and the academic year sets it, so there is no state notification for a parent to watch for.

The department's own reporting runs on the financial year instead. It recorded the 2024-2025 spend after the fact and published the 2025-2026 figure as a forward allotment (Policy Note 2025-2026, BC, MBC and Minorities Welfare Department), then carried a fresh allocation into 2026-2027 (Policy Note 2026-2027, BC, MBC and Minorities Welfare Department). For a parent, the date that binds is the one the headmaster sets when the school compiles its list, which makes when the list closes the more useful question at the school gate than when applications open.

Who can apply

Eligibility criteria

Four tests bind, and community is the one that ends most enquiries. The girl must belong to a caste listed as Most Backward Class or Denotified Community, she must be studying in the 3rd to 6th standard in a government or government-aided school in a rural area, her parental annual income must not exceed Rs.1,00,000, and her district must not be Chennai (Scholarship Schemes, BC, MBC and Minorities Welfare Department). The department's current citizen charter restates the community, school, rural-area and income conditions unchanged, and adds that priority goes to girl children of widows or abandoned women (Citizen Charter 2026-2027, Backward Classes Welfare Department).

Community is worth settling before anything else, because a family often knows it is backward without knowing which of the state's lists it sits on, and those lists lead to different schemes. Whether a caste is Most Backward or Denotified, and so whether this incentive is open at all, is decided by the department's published community list (Community list, BC, MBC and Minorities Welfare Department). Nativity is checked beside it, because the department restricts every one of its benefits to natives of Tamil Nadu (Scholarship Schemes, BC, MBC and Minorities Welfare Department).

On income, the number in circulation is often several years out of date. The ceiling was enhanced from Rs.72,000 to Rs.1 lakh with effect from 2021-2022 (Policy Note 2025-2026, BC, MBC and Minorities Welfare Department), and the 2026-2027 note still carries it as Rs.1.00 lakh (Policy Note 2026-2027, BC, MBC and Minorities Welfare Department).

Who cannot apply

Exclusions

Nothing is published as a bar list, so every exclusion here is the reverse face of a condition. A girl in a private unaided school is out, because only government and government-aided schools count. A girl in an urban ward is out, because the incentive is written for rural areas. A girl of a Backward Class community is out, because the scheme names Most Backward Classes and Denotified Communities only. Chennai district is outside the scheme altogether, and boys are not covered at any stage (Scholarship Schemes, BC, MBC and Minorities Welfare Department).

Continuation

Renewal conditions

Nothing carries forward, because nothing is sanctioned for more than one year at a time. The rate is published per annum against the standard the girl is sitting in, so the entitlement is re-established each academic year on the class she has moved into, and it ends after the 6th standard: the department publishes rates for the 3rd to 6th standards and nothing beyond (Policy Note 2025-2026, BC, MBC and Minorities Welfare Department). There is no separate renewal step to miss.

What you get

Award & benefits

The rate changes once, at the 6th standard.

Where the money lands is the part worth checking locally. The department's Right to Information manual records the incentive being deposited into a post office savings bank account in the girl's mother's name rather than paid to the school or handed over in cash (RTI manual, Departments of Backward Classes Welfare and Most Backward Classes and Denotified Communities Welfare). Read that as the historical mode and confirm the current one with the headmaster: the same manual still prints a parental income ceiling of Rs.25,000 for this incentive, a figure the state has since raised, so it is describing an older version of the scheme in other respects too.

The incentive sits on top of the fee position rather than replacing it, and what that fee position is depends on the medium of instruction. In Tamil medium, no tuition, special or examination fee is collected in government and government-aided schools at all; in English medium, tuition is waived from the 6th standard to the 10th (Scholarship Schemes, BC, MBC and Minorities Welfare Department). An English-medium girl in the 3rd to 5th standard is therefore the one case where no tuition waiver is yet running alongside the incentive.

• Financial Assistance: For 3rd to 5th grade: ₹500/- per annum.
• For 6th grade: ₹1,000/- per annum.

What to prepare

Documents required

The department publishes no document checklist against this incentive, so what a family has to produce follows from the conditions it does publish: a community certificate naming a Most Backward Class or Denotified Community caste, a proof of parental income within Rs.1,00,000, an address placing the school in a rural area, and, where the family qualifies for priority, a widow or destitute certificate (Scholarship Schemes, BC, MBC and Minorities Welfare Department).

Of those, the community certificate is the one the state has written penalties around. A parent or guardian who furnishes a false community certificate or declaration in a scholarship application is to be prosecuted under section 420 of the Indian Penal Code, while an officer who issues a false certificate faces departmental action, with prosecution reserved for a certificate deliberately and knowingly issued to favour an ineligible candidate (RTI manual, Departments of Backward Classes Welfare and Most Backward Classes and Denotified Communities Welfare). The rural address matters for a different reason: that condition is geographic rather than economic, so a family that moves into a town during the year changes its own eligibility.

Step by step

How to apply

The route is the school. The headmaster of the government or government-aided rural school files the claim with the District Backward Classes and Minorities Welfare Officer, and the department names that headmaster as the official to be contacted (Scholarship Schemes, BC, MBC and Minorities Welfare Department). Krishnagiri district prints the same route in one line: the incentive is applied for through the concerned school headmaster to the district office (Incentive Scheme for MBC/DNC Rural Girls, Krishnagiri District Administration).

Tracking the claim. There is a portal now, and it is not one a family logs into. The 2026-2027 policy note records the scheme as being implemented through the web portal umisssp.tnega.org (Policy Note 2026-2027, BC, MBC and Minorities Welfare Department), and the front page of that site, the Tamil Nadu State Scholarship Portal, offers a department login and nothing else (Tamil Nadu State Scholarship Portal, Tamil Nadu e-Governance Agency). The scheme's record has not caught up with that portal line, and still describes an offline claim with no link to file it through. So a parent is issued no reference number and has no status page to refresh: the claim is visible to the people handling it and not to the household. That makes the headmaster the first person to ask whether the girl's name went up for the year, and the District Backward Classes and Minorities Welfare Office in the District Collectorate campus the second (Scholarship Schemes, BC, MBC and Minorities Welfare Department).

How winners are picked

Selection process

Nothing is ranked and no marks are counted. A girl who meets the community, class, school, area and income conditions is eligible, and what the department does with the claim is verify it rather than shortlist against it.

Preference bites only where a district cannot cover everyone it has found eligible. The current charter puts priority with girl children of widows or abandoned women (Citizen Charter 2026-2027, Backward Classes Welfare Department), and the department's RTI manual sets the same preference out as an ordered list: girl children of widows first, then girl children of women abandoned by their husbands, then the poorest among poor students (RTI manual, Departments of Backward Classes Welfare and Most Backward Classes and Denotified Communities Welfare). A family in any of those positions should say so when the school collects documents, because no certificate in the ordinary set signals it.

Fine print

Terms & conditions

The conditions are cumulative and none of them is waivable at the school's discretion. The girl must be a native of Tamil Nadu from a caste on the state's Most Backward Classes or Denotified Communities list, studying in the 3rd to 6th standard in a government or government-aided school in a rural area outside Chennai district, in a family whose annual parental income does not exceed Rs.1,00,000 (Scholarship Schemes, BC, MBC and Minorities Welfare Department).

The department classes it among the scholarship schemes it funds entirely from the state budget (Policy Note 2026-2027, BC, MBC and Minorities Welfare Department), which is why its rules move by state order and a central portal's terms never reach it.

Get help

Contact

Start with the headmaster of the government or government-aided rural school, whom the department names as the official to be contacted for this scheme, then the District Backward Classes and Minorities Welfare Office in the District Collectorate campus (Scholarship Schemes, BC, MBC and Minorities Welfare Department).

Above the district, the scheme sits with the Directorate of Most Backward Classes and Denotified Communities Welfare, whose Commissioner is listed with a direct line and the address dir-combc@tn.gov.in (Contact us, BC, MBC and Minorities Welfare Department). Disputes about a community certificate go somewhere else again, to the department's written grievance form for community and certificate matters (Grievances, BC, MBC and Minorities Welfare Department).

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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References

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