Scheme of Development Assistance to Colleges for the Construction of Buildings(SDACCB)

Overview

About SDACCB

This is a capital grant to a college, not an award to a student. The college's Building Committee resolves to take a project up, its principal signs the estimates, and the money buys classrooms, a library block, laboratories, staff quarters or a hostel. The University Grants Commission runs it and its regional offices release the money; the Ministry of Education is the parent ministry, not the desk a proposal reaches.

If a scholarship listing sent you here, settle this before reading on. Nothing in this scheme reaches a student or a parent as money: no individual application, no income test, no stipend, no fee waiver. The benefit to a student is a building, and it arrives late, used by whoever is enrolled when the block finally opens. Anyone searching for support in their own name is on the wrong page.

UGC published a document under this exact name twice, and each time it was tied to a five year plan: once for the Eleventh Plan, 2007 to 2012, and once for the Twelfth Plan, 2012 to 2017. No third edition carries that title. What UGC issued next is called Guidelines for Construction of Buildings in Colleges (2018), and it does not stand on its own.

Building work now sits inside a merged scheme, Block Grant to Colleges, as one expenditure head under its Component I next to books and journals, equipment, ICT and the improvement of existing premises. The procedure moved with it. Under the Eleventh Plan document the college sent its plans and estimates to UGC and waited for the Commission to convey its approval before starting work. The Block Grant text says colleges need not submit any proposal to UGC for its approval: a Building Committee is constituted instead, and that committee carries responsibility for executing the project and for the money spent on it. Anyone reading the older text on an aggregator site is reading a procedure that has been replaced.

What the rules allow and what a college receives are separate questions. Allocation under the components is subject to the availability of funds and is not to be treated as a committed liability of UGC, in the words of the same guidelines. The building cap bites against whatever Component I actually arrives in a given year, not against the estimate the architect drew, so the college's own contribution is the number to settle before the drawings are commissioned.

Who runs it

Provider

At a glance

Key details

Calendar

Important dates

This scheme never had an application window a college could miss. Its life was bounded by the five year plans that authorised it, 2007 to 2012 and then 2012 to 2017, and the staggered release the myScheme record still reproduces belongs to that design. Under the Block Grant the calendar is annual instead: 75% of the grant goes out at the beginning of a financial year and the balance follows on a utilisation certificate and statement of expenditure covering at least 50% of the allocated amount, per those guidelines. A building project therefore has to be planned around the college's financial year, not around a scheme deadline.

Who can apply

Eligibility criteria

Two sections of the UGC Act decide whether a college can be funded at all. Section 2(f) brings it inside UGC's purview under the recognition regulations. Section 12B is the harder one: it is the separate declaration that makes a college eligible for central assistance from the Government of India or from any organisation receiving funds from the Central Government. A college recognised under 2(f) but never declared eligible under 12B cannot draw this grant, and its standing is a matter of public record rather than of correspondence.

Two further tests were added after the Eleventh Plan text that the myScheme record reproduces. The Twelfth Plan guidelines made accreditation mandatory for every college after two batches have passed out or six years have elapsed, whichever comes first. The 2018 Block Grant guidelines then narrowed the field to Government and Government aided private colleges included under Section 2(f) and declared eligible under Section 12B of the UGC Act, 1956, required NAAC accreditation or at least an accepted Institutional Information for Quality Assessment, and made registration on the PFMS portal compulsory.

Staffing decides whether a college qualifies at all, and the count is of positions sanctioned and filled, not sanctioned and vacant. The 2018 rules ask for at least 7 full time permanent teaching positions in an Arts or Commerce college, 11 in a Science or multi faculty college, and 5 in a single faculty college or a college of education, with at least three teaching departments in a faculty except in single faculty colleges. A postgraduate department earns additional assistance only on its own terms: 4 teachers in Humanities and Social Sciences, 5 where there is practical or field work, access to at least 8 refereed journals in the subject, and a research record across the preceding five years, per the same guidelines.

Who cannot apply

Exclusions

The record carries no heading called exclusions. What disqualifies a college is spread across the certificates its principal has to sign instead, and two clauses there do most of the work. The first is in the Building Project Certificate: the principal certifies that the college has not availed of any grant for the proposed construction earlier, in the Eleventh Plan guidelines and again in the 2018 building rules. A second grant for the same building is closed off by that one line.

The second is the land clause, which stops as many files as the first. The same certificate requires the site to be under the undisputed ownership and possession of the college, trust or society, and where the land stands in a trust's name it wants an irrevocable registered resolution earmarking that land for the college's exclusive use. An evening college is eligible for a building project only if it owns land of its own and does not function inside a day college's building, per the Twelfth Plan development grant guidelines. The Planning Board's certificate in that same document adds one more: the assistance sought may not be for the purpose of fulfilling the conditions of affiliation laid down by the university. A wholly self financed private college falls outside the current eligibility clause altogether, whatever recognition it holds.

Continuation

Renewal conditions

Nothing here is awarded to a person for a tenure, so renewal in the scholarship sense does not arise. The recurring thing is the annual allocation, and it recurs only against paperwork. Grants released under all heads are to be utilised within one year, and any grant left unutilised in the prescribed period is liable to be refunded along with interest at the prescribed rate. A college's proposal for the following year is considered on the strength of its utilisation certificate and statement of expenditure; once two financial years have gone by, only an audited utilisation certificate and audited statement of expenditure for the grant of the year preceding the last will move the next one, under the Block Grant rules. A second building project is possible, then, but for a different building, and only for a college whose last file was closed properly.

What you get

Award & benefits

The grant is paid on a 100% basis within the approved ceiling, as the Block Grant guidelines put it, and that phrase is the one colleges most often misread. It means UGC does not demand a fixed percentage contribution against the sanctioned amount; it does not mean UGC pays whatever the building ends up costing. Everything above the ceiling is the college's own liability, and the principal certifies in advance that the excess will be met from the college's own resources and that construction will not be delayed for want of funds.

Building work is also capped as a share of the college's development money. Expenditure on construction, extension and renovation together must not exceed 50% of the total grant allocated under Component I, per the 2018 guidelines. The change worth noticing is not only the size of that share but what it is measured against: the plan-era document the myScheme record reproduces set its building share against a whole plan period's General Development Assistance allocation, while the current cap runs against one year of Component I. That is why the older text reads as more generous than the position a college is actually in.

That makes the Component I ceiling the number that decides how big a building project can be. It is set per college by student strength and faculty type, not per building.

A single faculty college draws less, on a shorter scale that starts at Rs 5.00 lakh for 50 to 200 students and reaches Rs 8.00 lakh at 601 and above, and an eligible postgraduate department adds Rs 3.00 lakh in the sciences or Rs 2.00 lakh in the social sciences and humanities, in the same table set. No published ceiling attaches to a particular building type. UGC lists what may be built, from classrooms, library, laboratories, a workshop shed and an animal house to hostels, staff quarters, a seminar hall, an auditorium, a canteen, a health centre and sports facilities, but prices none of them separately; the arithmetic runs entirely through the college level ceiling and the building cap.

• Financial Assistance
• The scheme provides financial assistance for the construction and renovation/extension (of existing buildings) of various types of buildings (e.g., classrooms, library, laboratories, administrative block, staff quarters, hostels).
• The University Grants Commission provides financial assistance on a 100% basis within the approved ceiling.
• Colleges may seek assistance up to 60% of the total grants allocated under General Development Assistance in a Plan period for the construction of buildings.
• The release of the approved grant is staggered based on progress and documentation: 50% of the approved grant will be released while conveying the University Grants Commission’s approval to the Plan and Estimates.
• 40% of the approved grant will be released upon receipt of the audited Utilisation Certificate, audited Statement of Expenditure, and progress report of the first installment indicating the stage of construction (Annexure-IV & V).
• Remaining 10% of the grant will be released on receipt of the Completion documents (Annexure-IV, VI, VII, revised estimates, and photographs).
• The College must ensure that the expenditure exceeding the UGC grant, if any, will be met by the College from its own resources.
• The construction must not be delayed for want of funds.
• The Project should be completed in a time-bound manner (in months).
• The construction must be executed in accordance with the plan accepted by the Commission.

What to prepare

Documents required

The proposal is a file about a building, not a form about an institution, and it is assembled in two halves. The first half is what the Building Committee has to see before it can resolve anything: a plan of the proposed building prepared and signed by a qualified engineer or registered architect, countersigned by the principal and approved by the local authority; the title deed of the land; detailed estimates; a rate conformity certificate with an abstract of cost; and the building project certificates. Only after the committee has resolved does anything travel to UGC, and what travels is short, the resolution and the committee's certificate that the plan and estimates conform to the Commission's norms and to the current schedule of rates of the region, signed by every member.

The estimate is where files are most often sent back, because UGC does not leave the soft costs to the architect's judgement. Each one is fixed as a stated share of the civil work cost, and an estimate carrying a rounder figure than the guideline allows is an estimate that comes back.

The second half closes the file after the work is done: the audited utilisation certificate and audited statement of expenditure the block grant runs on, an audited assets certificate confirming that inventories of the permanent and semi permanent assets created out of the grant are being kept up to date, a completion certificate signed by the principal together with the qualified engineer or registered architect, and photographs of the outer and inner views. The completion certificate is the one to read before signing: it has to state the total completion cost, and any variation against the estimates or the accepted tender has to be justified in writing.

Step by step

How to apply

The building project itself is not applied for. Nothing about it goes to UGC for approval, and the first act is constituting the Building Committee, because no resolution is valid without it. The composition is fixed by the 2018 guidelines: the principal, the vice principal where one is appointed, a representative of the affiliating university, a technical representative of CPWD, PWD, a zilla parishad or a corporation not below the rank of assistant engineer, two teachers, a representative of the user teaching department, one representative each from administration and accounts, and the architect engaged by the college, who must be registered with the Council of Architecture. Quorum is 5, and the university representative plus either the engineer or the architect has to be in the room.

There is an online step, but it belongs to the block grant rather than to the building. Registration on UGC's e-schemes portal sits among the general eligibility conditions for submitting the online application, alongside the compulsory PFMS registration, in the Block Grant guidelines. The building file rides on the grant that registration unlocks; it is not separately uploaded anywhere.

The college then decides how the work will be executed, and UGC allows three routes while insisting that no more than two agencies be involved in planning and execution. The whole job can go to CPWD, the state PWD or another government agency as deposit work. A registered architect can be selected through advertisements in one national and one local daily and asked for the architectural design, with the rest tendered. Or the college can execute the work itself if it appoints competent authorised people to supervise. Where tenders are invited, the college advertises in one national and one local daily, generally accepts the lowest, and explains in writing if it does not; the value of the estimates, the number of tenders received, the lowest value, the value accepted and the reasons for departing from the lowest all go to UGC with the Component I utilisation certificate.

Following a Building File Through the Regional Office

Grants to colleges are not released from UGC headquarters. They are disbursed by the regional offices, and a college deals only with the one covering its state: Hyderabad for Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Puducherry and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands; Pune for Maharashtra, Gujarat, Goa, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu; Bhopal for Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh; Guwahati for the north eastern states; Kolkata for West Bengal, Bihar, Odisha and Jharkhand, with Sikkim appearing under both Guwahati and Kolkata in UGC's own table; Bengaluru for Karnataka, Kerala and Lakshadweep; and the Northern Regional College Bureau in New Delhi for Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Chandigarh, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, as UGC's annual report sets out. Money moves through PFMS, so the college's PFMS record and the bank statement it files at the end of each financial year are the trail any query is answered from. Where a file stalls, the single window left is the Commission's e-Samadhaan portal, which accepts a grievance from an institution as well as from students and staff.

How winners are picked

Selection process

Under the current design there is no contest for basic building money. Component I is provided to every eligible college each year within the ceiling, so a college that clears the eligibility tests is inside the scheme rather than ranked against its neighbours. Merit enters only above that floor. The additional Component II money is set by NIRF rank or NAAC score, running from an extra 50% of Component I for a college in the top 50 of its NIRF category or holding a CGPA of 3.51 and above, down through 40%, 30% and 20% to no additional grant at all beyond rank 200 or at a CGPA of 2.75 or below, as the guidelines tabulate it. Under the Eleventh Plan scheme the step was different in kind, an approval rather than a competition: UGC processed the submitted plans and estimates and conveyed its approval or otherwise to the institution.

Fine print

Terms & conditions

The conditions are financial before they are architectural. Allocation is subject to the availability of funds and is not to be treated as a committed liability of UGC. Interest earned on grants in aid must be remitted to the Commission and cannot be kept as extra money. Expenditure on non recurring items must follow the General Financial Rules, 2017, and purchases are to be made through the GeM portal. Audit is prescribed by ownership: a chartered accountant empanelled by the CAG and appointed by the governing body or planning board for a private college, and the state Accountant General or a CAG empanelled chartered accountant for a government college. Where a hostel is being built, the reservation to keep in view is 15% for Scheduled Caste, 7.5% for Scheduled Tribe and 27.5% for OBC (non creamy layer) students in centrally supported institutions, or the state level percentage where that applies, under the same rules. On the construction side the work must be executed in accordance with the plan accepted, the project completed in a time bound manner, and an inventory of the permanent and semi permanent assets created out of the grant maintained and kept up to date.

Get help

Contact

The Commission does not staff a desk for this scheme, and neither a helpline number nor a scheme mailbox appears in the record. The working contact for a college is the UGC regional office listed above for its state, which is the office that both processes and releases the grant. The Commission's own address on every edition of these guidelines is University Grants Commission, Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg, New Delhi. A college that wants to confirm its own standing before it commissions drawings can check itself against UGC's published lists of colleges under Sections 2(f) and 12B, and take an unanswered file to the e-Samadhaan portal.

Source

Official links

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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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