Special Incentive to ST (P)/OBC/MOBC Meritorious Students(SISTPOMMS)

Overview

About SISTPOMMS

Every listing of this Assam scheme repeats the same four marks thresholds. The thresholds are real, but they are not what settles an application. What settles it is the notice the Directorate publishes that year, because one round invited only Graduation and Post Graduation results, the next only HSLC and Higher Secondary, and the two most recent ones restricted the whole scheme to Scheduled Tribe (Plain) applicants. A student who reads the marks table and misses the notice applies into a round that was never open to them.

The scheme pays a single grant on a single exam result, and the office that runs it has changed its name. It is a state scheme of the Welfare of Plain Tribes and Backward Classes department, which describes itself as the nodal department for the welfare and development of Assam's Scheduled Tribes, Scheduled Castes and Other Backward Classes, and as the department responsible for the Tribal Sub-Plan and Scheduled Castes Sub-Plan components of the State Annual Plan (Department of Tribal Affairs (Plain), mandate). The directorate that signs the advertisements and receives the applications is now styled the Directorate of Tribal Affairs (Plain), Assam, at Rukmini Nagar in Guwahati (Directorate of Tribal Affairs (Plain), contact list). Older notices under the same scheme file were signed as the Directorate of Welfare of Plain Tribes and Backward Classes, which is the name a student will meet on most of the paperwork still in circulation.

The three category labels in the scheme name are Assam's own, and two of them do not exist as national categories. ST (P) is Scheduled Tribe (Plain): the department took the word "Plains" into its name in 1976, once a separate Hill Areas Department had been created to look after the hill districts and their autonomous councils (Department of Tribal Affairs (Plain), history), and the 2025-26 notice writes the community out in full as "Scheduled Tribes (Plain)" (Notice, Special Incentive to ST (P) meritorious students, 2025-26). MOBC is More Other Backward Classes, a state list the same department keeps alongside its Other Backward Classes list, and its own order on reservation in public services names the two side by side (Representation of Other Backward Classes and More Other Backward Classes in public services). A caste certificate that says OBC in another state is not the document this scheme reads.

Who runs it

Provider

At a glance

Key details

Calendar

Important dates

There is no annual calendar. The Director issues a notice, sends it to the Director of Information and Public Relation for publication in English and Assamese dailies, and gives students a matter of weeks to file. Three rounds show how far the scope moves between them:

The qualifying marks themselves have moved. The 2020-21 round asked Graduation applicants for 65% and Post Graduation applicants for 60%, both below the thresholds the current guideline now sets (2020-21 advertisement), so an old advertisement is not a safe guide to this year's bar and a percentage that carried one round can fall short in the next.

Who can apply

Eligibility criteria

Two conditions carry the whole scheme, and the guideline states them twice over. Its eligibility clause asks that the applicant belong to an ST (P), OBC or MOBC community of Assam and have secured 80% or above in Matriculation, 75% or above in 10+2, 70% or above in Graduation or 65% or above in Post Graduation; the definitions clause above it fixes those same four figures as what the word "meritorious" means inside this regulation (Guideline approved 2021, Special Incentive to ST (P)/OBC/MOBC Meritorious Students).

The definitions clause also answers the board question that the marks table leaves hanging, and it answers it more widely than the scheme's first version did. A student is defined as a person who has passed Matriculation from the SEBA, CBSE or ICSE Class X board, or 10+2, or Graduation, or Post Graduation, so a CBSE or ICSE candidate schooled in Assam is inside the definition rather than outside it (Guideline approved 2021). The earlier ST (P) guideline had named only the SEBA or CBSE board in the same place, and it is also where the grade question was first settled, in a note that a CBSE Class X grade is converted to a percentage and the beneficiary selected accordingly (Earlier guideline for ST (P) Meritorious Students).

On paper the conversion falls to the applicant. The form printed for the 2022-23 round left one line for the percentage of marks with the instruction that a CGPA be converted into it, and asked for the last exam pass certificate or marksheet to be enclosed against the qualification entry (Application form, Special Incentive to ST (P) and OBC/MOBC Meritorious Students 2022-23).

There is no earnings test anywhere in the scheme. The guideline states that there will not be any income bracket for availing this benefit, the printed notices for the 2020-21 and 2022-23 rounds each carried the same rule in their own words, that there is no income criterion of parents or guardians, and no income certificate has ever appeared in a document list published for this scheme.

Who cannot apply

Exclusions

No clause in either guideline names a group of students and shuts it out, and none is invented here. The bars that reject applications in practice are about timing and scope rather than category. The 2020-21 advertisement said that no claim would be considered from students who had qualified their examination before January 2020, and tied the incentive to marks secured in that academic year (Advertisement, Special Financial Incentive to ST (P) and OBC/MOBC Meritorious Students 2020-21); the 2022-23 notice wrote the same restriction against the HSLC and Higher Secondary examinations of that year alone (Notice, Special Incentive to ST (P)/OBC/MOBC Meritorious Students 2022-23). A result from an older session, a level the current notice did not invite, and a community certificate issued outside Assam are the three things that end an application before it reaches the committee.

Continuation

Renewal conditions

Neither guideline sets a renewal condition, and neither one has to: the grant attaches to a result, not to a course, so there is no continuing year to renew into. A student who clears the next level later meets the definition again at that level, and applies again when a notice invites it. Nothing in the guideline treats the second application as a continuation of the first, and no clause anywhere in it counts how many times one student may be approved.

What you get

Award & benefits

The grant is a fixed amount per level, not a rate and not a fee waiver. The guideline's limit clause sets a flat Rs 10,000 for a Matriculation pass and Rs 15,000 for a 10+2 pass, and writes two further fixed amounts into the same sentence for Degree and Post Graduation students, all of them payable to the beneficiaries the Selection Committee approves (Guideline approved 2021). Nothing in the clause scales with how far above the threshold a result lands, so two Matriculation results that both clear the bar draw the identical amount.

Payment goes to the student's own bank account, and the form is where that gets fixed. The 2022-23 form carried a bank block for the branch name, the account number and the IFS code, with the passbook to be enclosed and a note that students should have their individual account, which rules out routing the grant through a parent's (Application form 2022-23).

How many grants are given in a year is not published anywhere. The guideline works to a target and an allocation rather than to a fixed count, which is why it says the benefit is given on a first come first serve basis and on the basis of target and availability of fund.

• Financial Assistance
• ₹10,000/- for students passing Matriculation (Class X) with 80% or above.
• ₹15,000/- for students passing 10+2 with 75% or above.
• ₹20,000/- for Graduation students with 70% or above.
• ₹25,000/- for Post Graduation students with 65% or above.
• Disbursement Conditions
• Benefits are granted on a first-come, first-served basis, subject to fund availability.
• The Selection Committee may lower cut-off marks if insufficient applications are received.
• Financial assistance is transferred to the bank accounts of selected beneficiaries.

What to prepare

Documents required

The online round changed the paperwork more than the printed lists suggest. For 2025-26 the notice asked for an Aadhaar card, a digital caste certificate, the marksheet of the recently declared examination duly countersigned by the head of department, the HSLC admit card, a photo and a signature (Notice 2025-26). Two of those catch people out. The caste certificate has to be the digital one, not a scan of an old paper certificate, and the marksheet needs a countersignature from the institution before it is uploaded, which is a visit to the college office rather than a download.

The HSLC admit card is asked for at every level, including from Post Graduation applicants, because it is the department's date of birth proof. The paper form said so in as many words, printing "Date of Birth (Enclose HSLC Admit Card)" as a single field (Application form 2022-23).

Step by step

How to apply

Two routes sit in the record and only one of them is current. The scheme is listed as an offline scheme because that is how it ran for years: the Director advertised it, the applicant took the prescribed format off the departmental website the notice named, and the completed form travelled with its enclosures to the directorate at Satrinivash Path, Rukmini Nagar, Dispur Last Gate, Guwahati-6, to arrive by the closing date (Notice, Special Incentive to ST (P)/OBC/MOBC Meritorious Students 2022-23). That was still the method as recently as the 2024-25 round, whose printed form was headed for ST (P) students alone (Application form, Special Incentive to ST (P) Meritorious Students 2024-25).

The 2025-26 notice superseded it. Applications, it states, will be entertained through the online portal only, at dids.assam.gov.in (Notice 2025-26). DIDS is the Digital Infrastructure for DBT Schemes that Assam's Finance Department built as a common delivery system for the state's benefit programmes (Assam Society for Comprehensive Financial Management System, PMU terms of reference), so the account a student opens there is reused by other Assam schemes rather than being specific to this one. Whether the counter reopens for a later round is the notice's decision, not the portal's.

On the portal the sequence is register with a mobile number and an OTP, set a password, open the scheme, complete a scheme KYC form, then complete and submit the application form; the manual describes a success message and a Download Application button at the end of it (Assam DIDS Citizen Portal user manual). Save that download: no other proof of submission appears anywhere in the manual.

Following the Application on the DIDS Dashboard

The beneficiary dashboard splits into Saved, Draft, Applied and Enrolled, and it is the Applied tab that lists a submitted scheme. Opening the Status of a scheme there is where the application is tracked, and the same screen carries the withdraw option behind a three-dot icon, which sends an OTP to the registered mobile before anything is withdrawn (Assam DIDS Citizen Portal user manual). Keeping that number live therefore matters after submission, not only during it.

If the status stops moving, the portal's own Grievance Management menu is the route the manual documents. A grievance is filed against a set of questions, and on submission the portal returns a reference number and a downloadable copy, with the status readable afterwards in the Submitted and Processed tabs (Assam DIDS Citizen Portal user manual). That is a tracked complaint with a number on it, which an email to the directorate is not.

How winners are picked

Selection process

Scrutiny is done at the directorate and approval is done by a committee, not by the office that received the form. Every application goes to a Selection Committee chaired by the minister in charge of the department, with the Secretary or Joint Secretary as vice chairman, the Director as member secretary and the Deputy Director as a member (Guideline approved 2021). When more applications arrive than the target, the committee approves on the percentage obtained; when too few arrive, it holds the power to lower the cut off marks or percentage for any examination, which is why a year's effective cut off can sit below the published threshold.

The rule for a crowded year has been tightened once, and the change is worth knowing before an older explanation is trusted. The earlier ST (P) guideline ranked excess applications on a merit list generated from the percentage acquired in Matriculation, which meant a Post Graduation applicant was sorted on a Class 10 result (Earlier guideline for ST (P) Meritorious Students). The current guideline drops the Matriculation reference and sorts on the percentage obtained, which for anyone past Class 10 is the result they are actually applying on.

Fine print

Terms & conditions

The guideline is unusually direct about the limits of what an eligible student has earned. Assistance under the scheme is not a matter of right; it is extended depending on the applicant satisfying the eligibility and on the financial allocation available, the Selection Committee reserves the right to reject an application without assigning any reason, and the directorate does not hold itself responsible for false information or errors an applicant supplies. That paragraph is not confined to the guideline: it is reprinted at the foot of the advertisements and again on the application form the student signs, so an applicant agrees to it in the act of filing.

Get help

Contact

Applications and queries go to the Directorate of Tribal Affairs (Plain), Assam, Satrinivash Path, Rukmini Nagar, Dispur Last Gate, Guwahati-6. The directorate lists directorate-tap@assam.gov.in as the Director's email and names Shri Udayaditya Gogoi, ACS, as Director; the Joint Secretary cum Joint Director and the Financial and Accounts Officer are listed at the same address (Directorate of Tribal Affairs (Plain), contact list). A question about a submitted online application belongs in the DIDS grievance menu instead, because that is the channel that issues a reference number.

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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