Scheme For Campus Accommodation & Facilities Enhancing Social Experience(SCAFE)

Overview

About SCAFE

Six months is the whole grace period. If a technical institute has not begun construction within six months of the money arriving, AICTE's CAFES scheme document says the amount is to be refunded to the council with accrued interest, along with a justification for not starting. The Scheme for Campus Accommodation & Facilities Enhancing Social Experience is a capital grant of up to Rs 3.25 crore, and nearly every condition hanging off it exists to make sure a building actually goes up.

AICTE runs CAFES out of its Institutional Development Cell, the same desk that handles MODROB, GAINER and the Grant for Organising Conference, per the cell's own roles and responsibilities. What that desk releases here is construction money: up to Rs 3.25 crore so a Government or Government-aided technical institute can put up a hostel, or add to one it already runs, as the scheme document sets it out. The council's institutional development schemes page repeats that ceiling with the completion period attached to it, three years.

The three names in circulation, CAFES SC/ST students, CAFES NER and CAFES Differently Abled students, are three doors into one scheme rather than three separate grants. Each door sets its own headcount test, and the NER door carries a smaller floor for the size of the building, but the ceiling, the release ladder and the paperwork behind all three are the same.

What it changes for somebody enrolled on that campus. The visible result of a sanction is physical: hostel rooms where a campus had none, and possibly a gym, an indoor sports club and a library stocked for competitive examination and higher education preparation, because one grant covers all four heads. Nothing in it moves through a student. There is no CAFES application a student fills, no stipend attached to it and no fee relief, and the scheme document is silent on room rent and on who is allotted a bed, so both of those answers sit in the college's own hostel circular instead.

Who runs it

Provider

At a glance

Key details

Calendar

Important dates

CAFES runs in a window, not round the year, and the most recent window this page could trace has long closed. AICTE's AQIS 2021-22 financial-support advertisement listed all three CAFES variants on one row under Schemes for Institutes, opening 21-12-20 and closing 21-01-21, mode online, to be applied for by the institute. Those are 2020 and 2021 dates and they are quoted here as a record of how a round is announced, not as a live deadline.

No later CAFES window appears anywhere AICTE publishes. The scheme's myScheme record carries no open date and no close date, while AICTE's institutional development schemes page still shows a Click here to Apply link for CAFES that opens the council's partner portal sign-in rather than a form, so there is nothing an outsider can read from it. An institute waiting for the next round watches the council's bulletins for an AQIS advertisement; a date found anywhere else is not the date that binds.

Once money is sanctioned the clocks are fixed and they run against the institute.

Who can apply

Eligibility criteria

Who owns the institute decides more here than anything else in the file. The grant is open to AICTE approved Government and Government-aided engineering colleges, university departments and polytechnics, which puts a self-financed private college outside the scheme whatever its case, and the institute must have been in existence for the last five years, per the scheme document.

What AICTE never asks for is worth noticing. No NAAC grade, no NBA accreditation, no ranking and no placement record appears anywhere in the three pages of the scheme document. The decision turns on administrative status, age and student numbers, and those numbers are proved on Annexure A, a fixed proforma whose grid runs by academic year across the last three years and splits each year into SC, ST, differently abled and other, under the seal of the institute.

Who cannot apply

Exclusions

The geography clause is narrower than it reads, and it is the line most often taken the wrong way. Institutes in Punjab, Haryana, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and the Union Territories are shut out of CAFES SC/ST students, and out of that variant only, as the scheme document writes it. A Haryana polytechnic that crosses the differently abled threshold is still inside the scheme through another door.

The next two bars have no such second door. An institute short of the five-year existence test cannot apply under any variant, and neither can a private unaided college. After sanction a third exclusion attaches to the project instead of the applicant: any revision of the construction plan that reduces the facilities or the area is not allowed.

Continuation

Renewal conditions

CAFES has no renewal cycle. The scheme document describes one sanction against one approved project, released in instalments, with no annual re-application, no extension clause and no second grant for the same hostel.

What you get

Award & benefits

AICTE caps what it will pay towards one approved project at Rs 3.25 crore; no institute draws that sum for being eligible. Within it, Rs 3 crore is earmarked for the hostel itself and the balance is split three ways: Rs 5 lakh for gym equipment, Rs 10 lakh for an indoor sports club and Rs 10 lakh for a library for preparation of tests for competitive examination and higher education, all set out in the scheme document.

Who pays for the rest is settled on paper before AICTE sanctions anything. Annexure E is a certificate that names the Rs 3.25 crore total in its own text and states that if the construction cost of the project exceeds it, the additional cost is borne by the college authority or the state government. Its signature line belongs to the issuing authority, which the proforma heading identifies as the concerned Secretary for Technical Education in the state government, and the principal only verifies it. The same promise is asked for a second time at item 5 of Annexure C, over the head of the institute's own signature, so a proposal reaches AICTE with the overrun accounted for twice from two different offices.

The gym, sports club and library lines sit outside the instalment ladder and cannot be drawn early. AICTE releases them only after the second instalment has gone out and the building has been handed over in all respects, and then only against a quotation at a competitive rate, so equipment money follows a finished hostel rather than funding one in progress.

• Limit of Funding from AICTE: ₹ 3.25 crore
• Construction of Hostel: ₹ 3,00,00,000/-.- Establishment of Gym equipment: ₹ 5,00,000/-.- Establishment of Indoor sports club: ₹ 10,00,000/-.- Establishment of the library for preparation of tests for competitive examination/higher education: ₹ 10,00,000/-.
• Disbursement of the Funds: First Installment (50%): Disbursed in advance upon proposal sanction for hostel construction.- Second Installment (40%): Released after spot inspection and utilization of the first installment.- Third Installment (10%): Disbursed after submission of the completion certificate and all mandatory documents.- Additional Funds: For gym, sports club, and library after the second installment and competitive quotations.

What to prepare

Documents required

On only two of the six annexures does the signature at the foot of the page belong to the college. The other four each print somebody else's signature line, with the principal underneath as verifier, and collecting those four is what really sets an institute's timeline.

Annexure D repays a second reading, because AICTE's own page contradicts itself on it. The heading of that proforma asks for a land ownership and possession certificate from the concerned Tehsildar or SDM, countersigned by the principal, which is also how the scheme document describes the requirement. The signature block printed at the foot of the same page reads PWD Officer. One sheet therefore names two different offices, and an institute is better off asking the cell which signature it will accept than travelling to a tehsil office on a guess.

Alongside the annexures go the drawings and the costing. Two copies of the plan and detailed estimates, signed by the engineer or architect and countersigned by the principal, are required, the rates have to conform to the CSR of the region, and every page of the documents and of the proposal itself carries the signature and stamp of the principal or director, as the scheme document sets out.

Step by step

How to apply

The scheme's myScheme record files the application mode as Offline, and that single word undersells what actually happens. The submission is made online through AICTE's portal and it is only complete when a printed copy reaches New Delhi by post, so an institute that reads Offline and prepares a paper proposal alone has no application at all.

The institute logs in at the AICTE web portal with the credentials AICTE issued it, opens AICTE Quality Improvement Schemes, and picks CAFES Scheme Application from the AQIS Schemes dropdown, following the council's user manual. Nothing opens until the AQIS record's institute and bank rows are confirmed, and confirming them turns both read only. Two rules bind that account: it must be a savings account, and its holder cannot be a personal name. The manual then has the institute download the mandate form and the declaration certificate, and re-upload the verified mandate as a scanned PDF of up to 10 MB under AQIS Document Attachment.

The application form is lettered rather than paged, and it skips letters: Section A takes the application details, C the anticipated budget of the hostel, D the number of students enrolled, E financial commitment from other organisations or agencies, F the details of present hostel facilities, and J the attachments. Sections E and F stay shut unless the institute answered yes in Section A to external funding assistance and to extending an existing hostel.

Section C is where a weak proposal shows. It is not a single budget figure but a grid the institute fills row by row for each criterion, and the manual lists twenty-two of them, from plinth area, total built up area and total carpet area through land ownership and use details, building construction type, water supply, electricity supply and backup, kitchen and dinning, internet facility, television hall and landscape and approach road to a final Any other. Each row asks for five entries: details, anticipated expenditure, budget by the parent organisation, external assistance, and the assistance requested from the council. Section D then wants the enrolment split by boys and girls across three academic years, which is a different cut of the same student body from the category grid on Annexure A. When the sections are filled the institute validates the application, waits for the validation message, and only then submits.

Then the printed part. The steps AICTE publishes tell the institute to download its report after submitting, check that every page of the form carries the head of institution's signature and stamp, and send the printed application with all essential documents by registered or speed post to the Institutional Development Cell in New Delhi. Only applications that arrive by registered or speed post are considered, and nothing sent by email is entertained.

There is no CAFES enquiry counter to check a file against. AICTE publishes no status page for the scheme that anyone can open from outside: a submitted proposal carries an AQIS Application ID and sits under All AQIS Application Information inside the institute's own portal account, and the only copy the institute can pull for itself comes from the reports screen, where Run Report is set to the scheme and the year and the output is downloaded.

How winners are picked

Selection process

A proposal is read by an expert committee rather than a desk. The scheme document fixes who sits on it: a Vice Chancellor of any university or the Director of a centrally funded institution as chairman, a professor of civil engineering, a professor from any discipline, and an architect.

A second body sees the site later. Before the second instalment moves, an evaluation committee of two engineers, one from civil and one an architect, drawn from an AICTE approved panel and organised by the concerned AICTE regional office, carries out a spot inspection, and its report has to carry all the mandatory documents. Beyond the committee's composition and the papers it reads, AICTE publishes no weightage and no score sheet for CAFES.

Fine print

Terms & conditions

Of the five conditions, the refund clause bites hardest. If construction has not been initiated within six months, the scheme document requires the amount back with accrued interest and a justification for the delay, so until the first foundation is dug an institute is holding a liability rather than a grant.

The no-reduction clause closes the obvious way out of a cost overrun. An institute that finds tenders coming in above its estimate cannot quietly shrink the hostel to fit, because a change in the construction plan that reduces the facilities or the area is not allowed, which throws the shortfall back onto the undertaking already signed on Annexure E. Reporting continues to the end: an annual progress report each year, a project completion report once the work is done, and a utilisation certificate with a statement of accounts in the prescribed proforma, audited by the institute's finance or accounts officer.

Get help

Contact

AICTE publishes two contacts for CAFES and splits them by the kind of problem. Scheme questions go to cafesidc@aicte-india.org on (011) 29581340, and portal or upload trouble goes to it3idc@aicte-india.org on (011) 29581334, both printed in the scheme document.

The printed proposal goes to the Institutional Development Cell at All India Council for Technical Education, Nelson Mandela Marg, Vasant Kunj, New Delhi 110070. AICTE's how-to-apply note addresses the envelope to Dr. Neeraj Saxena, Advisor, whom the cell's own page still lists as Advisor I on a core team of two.

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