Senior Hostel (Scheduled Tribes)(SHST)

Overview

About SHST

The Madhya Pradesh Tribal Affairs Department records the grant, loan or financial assistance amount under this scheme as nil, and that is not a gap in the paperwork (CM Helpline entitlement record). Senior Hostel (Scheduled Tribes) hands a Scheduled Tribe student a bed, a mess and a supervised place to study for the years between Class 9 and Class 12, rather than a transfer into a bank account. Knowing which of those two things you are applying for changes where you go, what you ask for, and who can say yes.

This is a boarding scheme run by the state, not a centrally funded one. The department's own entitlement record classifies it as a state-sponsored scheme, sets its objective as free accommodation and mess for students studying in Class 9 to Class 12, and dates it to 1 January 1966 (CM Helpline entitlement record). The rulebook the hostels still run under carries the same vintage: the Hostel Operation Rules 1966-67 sit in the department's list of the acts and rules it administers (Administrative Report 2025-26).

The network behind the scheme is large, and it is weighted heavily towards boys' hostels.

A senior hostel is one rung on a ladder the department runs from Class 1 upwards, and the rung matters. Its hostel scheme page sorts the network by class: ashram schools take Class 1 to 8, junior hostels take Class 6 to 8, senior hostels take Class 9 to 12, and college hostels take students above Class 12 (MP Tribal Affairs Department, hostel scheme). The student this particular rung is built around is the one whose village school stops at the middle level, for whom the distance to the nearest high school is what would otherwise end the schooling.

Who runs it

Provider

At a glance

Key details

Calendar

Important dates

This one runs on an open-ended calendar. The department records it as commencing on 1 January 1966, prints no closing date against it at all, and gives the financial year as the time frame within which a case is dealt with (CM Helpline entitlement record). Neither official page announces a season in which applications open and shut.

The date that has actually moved is the food rate: the figure standing in the department's latest administrative report is the one that took effect on 1 July 2025 (Administrative Report 2025-26).

Who can apply

Eligibility criteria

The conditions are short, and one of them comes round again every year. A pass in the previous year's examination sits on the record beside tribal status, native status and a place in a government or recognised school, all four packed into one field, so a boarder re-earns the seat each session instead of holding it on the strength of the first admission (CM Helpline entitlement record).

Native status is settled on screen before any hostel sees the file. The MPTAAS beneficiary profile puts local residence on a declaration page in the format the General Administration Department prescribes, where the applicant picks which test of local-resident eligibility the family meets and names the place the declaration is made (MPTAAS profile registration manual).

What the record never mentions is money coming in. No family income limit is stated for a senior hostel seat on the entitlement record or in the department's administrative report, which is unusual enough among student schemes to be worth confirming with the superintendent rather than assuming.

Who cannot apply

Exclusions

Nothing is listed under exclusions, and that silence is worth reading precisely rather than filling in. No income bar is written down, and nothing on the record bars a boarder who already draws some other departmental benefit, which leaves the conditions on the same record as the only published way to be ruled out (CM Helpline entitlement record).

Continuation

Renewal conditions

A senior hostel seat is an annual arrangement. The entitlement record sets the scheme's time frame as the financial year, and the previous-year pass condition has to be satisfied again each time (CM Helpline entitlement record). The mess stipend follows the same rhythm and is paid for 10 months of the year rather than twelve (Administrative Report 2025-26). No separate renewal application is published, so the practical question for a boarder moving from Class 10 into Class 11 is whether the superintendent has carried the name onto the new session's roster.

What you get

Award & benefits

The department itemises what a hostel supplies free of cost, and the list goes well past a bed: the building, electricity and water, the food arrangement, furniture, bedding material, a library and coaching (MP Tribal Affairs Department, hostel scheme).

On top of the seat there is a food stipend, and it is set per boarder rather than per hostel. The department's administrative report for 2025-26 puts it at Rs 1,700 a month for a girl boarder with effect from 1 July 2025, payable for 10 months of the year, and prints a slightly lower monthly figure for a boy boarder in the same sentence (Administrative Report 2025-26).

A district page is no substitute for that report. Khargone's collectorate still describes the food-expense scholarship for Scheduled Tribe hostellers as 1300 for boys and 1340 for girls across all classes (District Khargone), a pair of figures the department has since moved past. The rate gets revised, and the annual report is where the standing one is printed.

Where that stipend lands is the one thing the official pages leave open. The entitlement record puts the assistance amount at nil and, a line further down the same table, records that payment to beneficiaries runs online through MPTAAS (CM Helpline entitlement record). Neither page says whether the money reaches the boarder or the hostel kitchen, so plan around the seat and the mess as the benefit and put the stipend question to the superintendent.

The spending behind it is real money. For 2025-26 the department provided Rs 22,738.60 lakh for senior hostels including the excellence senior hostels, and had spent Rs 15,543.55 lakh of it (Administrative Report 2025-26).

• Free Accommodation and Mess Facilities.

What to prepare

Documents required

The paperwork the scheme lists is the paperwork MPTAAS asks for, and two items on it are narrower than the words suggest. A caste certificate counts only where it is the digitally signed one that came out of the e-District portal or a Lok Seva Kendra, and it goes in as a number and a date of issue that the portal verifies before it displays the certificate's own details back to you. Samagra is two entries and not one, the student's ID and the family ID, and the profile fills itself in from the Samagra portal only once that pair clears (MPTAAS profile registration manual).

Income is handled the same way as residence, as a declaration rather than a certificate: the profile's income page takes the total annual income of everyone in the family, again in the General Administration Department's prescribed format, and each filled format is displayed back for printing before the next page opens (MPTAAS profile registration manual).

Step by step

How to apply

The application does not finish on a website. The entitlement record sets out the whole sequence in one line: get the beneficiary profile registered on the MPTAAS portal at an internet kiosk, then apply to the superintendent concerned (CM Helpline entitlement record).

That profile is a one-time registration, and the manual is explicit that the student need not be the one making it. An MP Online kiosk, a Lok Seva Kendra, a common service centre or a departmental officer can register it instead, in which case the login ID and password come back by email and SMS, which is why the mobile number on the form has to be one the family still reads (MPTAAS profile registration manual).

Four counters are named on the record for applying, contacting or registering: the hostel superintendent, the block education officer, the principal, and the district organiser or assistant commissioner. The fee entered against the scheme is nil (CM Helpline entitlement record).

Tracking the Application and the Stipend

Senior hostels sit on the MPTAAS hostel module alongside the excellence senior, junior, college and PVTG hostels, and the same project runs a payment module and a report and dashboard module beside it (Administrative Report 2025-26). The portal's own account of what that buys a student is written in the future tense rather than the present: on full roll-out, a scheme that needs an application can be applied for over the internet without a trip to an office, and the beneficiary reads the status of that application off their own dashboard (MPTAAS portal). So the dashboard is the first place to look, not proof that a bed has been allotted.

When it says nothing useful, the record names the route rather than leaving it to guesswork: an appeal under this scheme lies with the district organiser or assistant commissioner, the same officer the department designates for the scheme (CM Helpline entitlement record).

How winners are picked

Selection process

Nobody is ranked against anybody for a senior hostel bed. The entitlement record folds the beneficiary conditions and the selection procedure into one field, which is another way of saying that meeting the conditions is the selection, and it designates the district organiser or assistant commissioner as the officer for the scheme (CM Helpline entitlement record).

What is finite is the seat. Sanctioned strength across the senior hostel network is 56,440 places (Administrative Report 2025-26), and the roster deciding which boy or girl occupies one of them is kept at the hostel, which is why the record sends an applicant to the superintendent rather than to a district office.

Fine print

Terms & conditions

The scheme issues no terms and conditions document of its own. Hostels are run under the Hostel Operation Rules 1966-67, which stand at number six in the department's published list of the acts and rules it administers (Administrative Report 2025-26). The operating conditions that surface on the scheme record itself are brief: the facility is free, the fee is nil, and a decision is appealed to the district organiser or assistant commissioner (CM Helpline entitlement record).

Get help

Contact

The scheme is administered by the Tribal Affairs Department of the Government of Madhya Pradesh, and the officer designated on the record for it is the district organiser or assistant commissioner (CM Helpline entitlement record). Trouble with the portal itself, a login that will not work or a profile that will not verify, goes to the tribal wing's helpdesk on 1800-2333-951 or helpdesk.tribal@mp.gov.in, printed beside the login box (MPTAAS portal). The counter that actually settles a seat, though, is the superintendent of the hostel a student wants to live in.

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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