Scholarship for Self Finance Colleges Students of NT/DNT(SFSFCS)

Overview

About SFSFCS

A student from a Nomadic or De-notified Tribe who has taken admission in a self financed college in Gujarat is looking at a fee bill that no hostel seat and no maintenance allowance touches. The Director, Developing Castes Welfare answers it with a single reimbursement line: self finance college registration fees and examination fees together with a maximum of Rs 50,000 or the actual expenditure within the approved assistance, for families whose annual income stays inside Rs 2,00,000 (Director, Developing Castes Welfare). The award is easy to miss, because the state files it under a name no search result uses and takes the form on a portal the department's own name does not point at.

The directorate's educational list carries this award as Assistance to students of Nomadic / De-notified Tribes studying in self finance institutes, and its eligibility block runs to four lines: the student is from a Nomadic or De-notified Tribe, the annual income limit is Rs 2,00,000, the student is studying in a self finance institute, and the institute is certified by government (Director, Developing Castes Welfare). In the state's own accounts the scheme has a code rather than a title, BCK-325, and that code reaches it faster than its name does (Directorate of Developing Castes Welfare expenditure statement, March 2026).

It is a small budget line that keeps overrunning itself. For the year 2025-26 the directorate set a target of 6,000 students under BCK-325 and recorded 8,249, spending Rs 32.8861 crore on it, or 109.62 per cent of the outlay written against the line (Directorate of Developing Castes Welfare expenditure statement, March 2026). That behaviour tells an applicant more than any eligibility bullet does: demand above the plan was met rather than rationed back to it.

Who runs it

Provider

At a glance

Key details

Calendar

Important dates

This award is not opened and closed on a timetable of its own. Nothing in the record or on the directorate's page attaches a date to it; the date that governs is the one set for the whole year's filing on the portal. For the academic year 2026-27 the state scholarship portal's notice board announces form filling on Digital Gujarat between 06/07/2026 and 30/09/2026 for SC and OBC students (Gujarat Scholarship Portal), and the developing castes directorate's own instructions set exactly the same window for its own students, which is the line that binds an applicant here (Developing Castes Welfare, online application instructions).

One notice board carries more than one window, and that is the trap. The same screen invites Scheduled Tribe post-matric applications for 2026-27 between 01/09/2026 and 30/11/2026, which is a different directorate's calendar published on the same page (Gujarat Scholarship Portal). Reading the wrong row is the ordinary way a student concludes there are still two months in hand.

Who can apply

Eligibility criteria

The four tests on the scheme page decide who may apply. The filing instructions decide whether the application survives, and the certificates are where it usually does not. Neither the caste certificate nor the income certificate is read unless a competent authority issued it, the income certificate has to be the guardian's, and where the guardian is in government service the income tax form for that income goes up with it. A household in which the father has died substitutes the death certificate; parents who have divorced substitute the divorce order, after which the mother's income certificate is accepted (Developing Castes Welfare, online application instructions).

Two further conditions catch students who read the four lines and assumed they were through. A gap in study after Std 10 has to be covered by a signed declaration that no course was taken and no scholarship drawn during it, and a married female applicant has to produce a marriage certificate (Developing Castes Welfare, online application instructions).

Who cannot apply

Exclusions

The bar here is categorical before it is procedural. The directorate's rate schedule confines this assistance to students of self finance colleges, so a Nomadic or De-notified Tribe student sitting in a government or grant-in-aid institution is outside it however good the caste certificate is (Developing Castes Welfare, online application instructions).

The filing instructions supply the rest, and none of them can be argued afterwards. Applying in another scheme by mistake forfeits the difference in amount for good. One scholarship only is payable in one approved academic session of the college or university. A student who enters wrong information or conceals it is blacklisted, with no second form permitted (Developing Castes Welfare, online application instructions).

Continuation

Renewal conditions

Renewal is automatic here, which is as much a trap as a convenience. A student paid last year is placed in Renewal mode for the current year and told not to apply fresh; the Renewal button reopens the record already held, and the work is to verify the registration, bank, academic and disability blocks and upload the documents the new year calls for (Developing Castes Welfare, online application instructions).

Verify is the operative word, because the sanction is capped at what was actually spent. A renewal that reuses the previous year's fee receipt is documenting the previous year's expenditure, and it is the receipt for the current year of the course that the new claim rests on. Where a past recipient does not find the form in Renewal mode at all, the instructions do not treat that as a fault to report: the student goes back through Request a New Service, selects the current financial year and files fresh in the applicable scheme (Developing Castes Welfare, online application instructions).

What you get

Award & benefits

The rate is written as a ceiling and a comparison rather than as a monthly figure. It runs against the self finance college's registration and examination fees, and what is sanctioned is the lower of Rs 50,000 and the expenditure actually incurred within the approved assistance (Director, Developing Castes Welfare). Nothing inside it is a maintenance or hostel allowance, so the figure does not move with whether the student lives in a hostel or travels in each day.

Two other awards on the same dropdown get picked in its place by mistake, and neither of them is built this way.

Read the last column as what each scheme page publishes, not as what is binding everywhere. The rate schedule the directorate issues with its current filing instructions carries a higher income limit for the technical and professional line than that scheme's page does, so the schedule is the document to settle a borderline income against (Developing Castes Welfare, online application instructions).

• Financial Assistance: Up to ₹50,000/- for tuition fee, registration fee, education fee, and other scholarship-related charges.

What to prepare

Documents required

The annual fee receipt is the document that sets the amount, not merely the entitlement. The sanction is the lower of the ceiling and the expenditure actually incurred, so the receipt is what fixes the second half of that comparison, and the instructions want the year's figure rather than a semester one (Developing Castes Welfare, online application instructions).

Around it the directorate is as particular about form as about content. Scans are taken from originals, and a copy passes only where an original genuinely cannot be produced. The marksheet requirement is cumulative: the final year sheet for Std 10 and for every course taken since, in order, rather than the most recent one on its own. The bank detail wants three things legible in one image, the account number, the IFSC code and the branch, taken either from the first page of the passbook or from a cancelled cheque; where the bank has merged since the account was opened, it is the new IFSC and the new account number that count. A disability certificate where it applies, a recent passport size photograph and the Aadhaar number close the file, and the district officer may call for further supporting evidence where a case needs it (Developing Castes Welfare, online application instructions).

Step by step

How to apply

The form is filed online on the Digital Gujarat portal, and the instructions close the question of alternatives flatly: a student cannot apply for a scholarship scheme from any other place (Developing Castes Welfare, online application instructions).

The order is fixed, and the step students skip is the second one. Register as a citizen with a mobile number and an email address, log in, and update My Profile, because only a student whose profile is updated can file an application at all. Then Services, Scholarship Services, Request a New Service, select the financial year, and pick this scheme out of the list shown under the Director Developing Caste Welfare heading before Continue to Service (Developing Castes Welfare, online application instructions).

Inside the form come the registration, bank, academic and disability blocks, the uploads and the photograph, an OTP through Verify Mobile Number, and Confirm and Final Submit, which sends the application into the college's own login. Something to settle before you reach that point: if your course does not appear in the menu under your institute, the instructions put the fix on the college, which has to add the course from its own login before you can select it (Developing Castes Welfare, online application instructions).

The paper half still counts. The student prints the submitted application, attaches self attested copies of everything uploaded and deposits it at the college, and an application that was never final submitted, or never deposited, is not taken into consideration. Where the applicant is rural, an E-gram centre will key the form in (Developing Castes Welfare, online application instructions).

Where the Application Sits, and How to Move It

Digital Gujarat gives this scheme no separate status page. What stands in for one is the Select Financial Year dropdown inside Scholarship Services: it lists the past years alongside the current one, so an application filed in an earlier cycle opens from this year's login rather than having to be chased (Developing Castes Welfare, online application instructions).

Nothing can be edited after Final Submit. Where a correction is needed the college returns the application and informs the student, and the student login also now carries a Withdraw facility, so for as long as the college has not acted the student can pull the form back, amend it and send it again. Two bank conditions then decide whether a sanctioned amount lands at all: an account left unoperated long enough to have gone dormant cannot receive it, and a wrong account number typed on the form is the student's own responsibility (Developing Castes Welfare, online application instructions).

The department's other portal, e-Samaj Kalyan, does carry a Your Application Status link, and it is where this same directorate publishes its government hostel admission merit lists and its coaching scheme notices (e-Samaj Kalyan). It is not where this scholarship is filed, and a student who registers there first has moved nothing forward.

How winners are picked

Selection process

No merit list, rank order or quota is published for this scheme. The scheme page publishes an eligibility test and a rate (Director, Developing Castes Welfare); the instructions publish a verification chain instead of a contest, in which the application lands in the college's login, the college returns it where the details or the documents do not hold, and the district office can call for further evidence (Developing Castes Welfare, online application instructions). Because the sanction is capped at the expenditure actually incurred, the fee receipt ends up doing the work a merit score would do in a competitive award.

Fine print

Terms & conditions

There is no offline route into this scheme and no offline way out of it: the instructions record that the scholarship work is done online end to end and that no student is paid a scholarship any other way. Certificates are read only from a competent authority, and originals are what get scanned wherever an original exists. Choosing the wrong institute or the wrong course sends the application online to some other institution, and the consequence of that is the student's. Duplicate applications are asked against. The directorate's closing advice is not to wait for the last date and to fill the form under the college's guidance (Developing Castes Welfare, online application instructions).

Get help

Contact

Three different problems go to three different places, and sending the wrong one to Gandhinagar costs a week.

Whether your fee receipt, your caste certificate or your income certificate will be accepted is a district question, because the district office is the one the instructions authorise to call for further supporting evidence once your college has forwarded the file (Developing Castes Welfare, online application instructions).

Block No. 4, 3rd Floor, Dr. Jivraj Mehta Bhavan, Gandhinagar is where the Director, Developing Caste Welfare sits, and +91 79 23253245 is the number printed against this scheme rather than against the department at large (Director, Developing Castes Welfare). Send it the questions the scheme itself decides: the rate, the income limit, whether your institute counts as self finance.

If the screen itself is the obstacle, an upload it keeps refusing or an OTP that never lands, neither of those offices can move it, and the number the state scholarship portal publishes for form filling trouble is 18002335500 (Gujarat Scholarship Portal).

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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