State Disability Scholarship (Scholarship for Persons with Disabilities)(SDS(SPD))

Overview

About SDS(SPD)

This scholarship is paid out of Nagaland's own budget, and it reaches an age group the national disability scholarship does not touch. The Directorate of Social Welfare, Kohima, runs the State Disability Scholarship for children with a benchmark disability of 40% and above who are studying anywhere from Class I to Class VIII, and the 2026 cycle is open from 1st August to 30th November 2026 on the state's own Common Scholarship Portal (Guidelines for Scholarship for Persons with Disabilities, 2026).

The central scheme that families usually hear about first covers a different stretch of school. The Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities begins its Pre-Matric Scholarship at Classes IX and X (DEPwD scheme guidelines). So for a Naga child in primary or middle school, the state scheme is not a smaller alternative to the national one. It is the only one of the two that is open at all.

Who runs it

Provider

At a glance

Key details

Calendar

Important dates

The department has kept to a late-November close in consecutive cycles, and announces the opening through the state's Directorate of Information and Public Relations before the portal goes live.

Who can apply

Eligibility criteria

Two of the conditions here are not about the child at all. The application has to come from an institution holding a valid AISHE or UDISE code, so a child at an unrecognised school cannot be put forward however severe the disability, and parental or guardian income from all sources has to stay within Rs 2.50 lakh a year. The child's own tests are inhabitancy of Nagaland and a benchmark disability of 40% or more, of any type recognised under the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Rules 2017 (2026 guidelines).

The guidelines carry a certificate page the head of the institution has to complete, and it asks for more than a signature. The school states its recognition number issued by the Government of Nagaland, certifies that the child is a regular student of that class in the current session and not a repeater in it, and undertakes to report to the Director of Social Welfare if the child later leaves, discontinues, accepts another scholarship, or falls below 75% attendance. A stamped signature is not accepted on that page, and both the official seal of the head and the round seal of the school are compulsory.

Who cannot apply

Exclusions

Nothing is filed under exclusions in the state's published record; the bars sit inside the eligibility list instead, and three of them end an application outright. A student who failed the last examination is out for that year. A student already drawing any other scholarship is out. And a school without a valid AISHE or UDISE code cannot put a child forward at all (2026 guidelines). The portal makes the same point from its own side: an applicant may hold only one scholarship application open at a time (Common Scholarship Portal).

Continuation

Renewal conditions

Renewal is narrow and dated. The Directorate restricts it to beneficiaries of the 2025-26 period who have passed their last examination, and asks them to produce a copy of the progress report of the class or year just passed. Everyone else, including a returning applicant who missed a cycle, applies afresh. The distinction is made at the point of creating the application on the portal, where the applicant picks either Fresh or Renewal as the category before the institution and course details are attached (2026 guidelines, portal application steps).

What you get

Award & benefits

The Social Welfare Department's own scheme page records the assistance at Rs 200 per head per month, funded by the state, with 208 students on the rolls at that count; it writes the school range as Class A to Class VIII where the 2026 guidelines write Class I to Class VIII (Department of Social Welfare, Nagaland, 2026 guidelines). The scheme's published answers say the amount may vary from class to class, but no slab is printed anywhere, and the state adds that the figure may change as the Government of Nagaland revises its guidelines. Rs 200 a month is what the department has last put in writing.

The same statement shows how small the scheme is, and how unevenly it is taken up. Dimapur carries 75 of the 208 beneficiaries and Kohima 46, while Peren records 2 and Longleng 3 (Department of Social Welfare, Nagaland).

Payment reaches the student's own account, not the school's. The account has to sit in a scheduled bank and be seeded with Aadhaar and a mobile number, and the portal warns that only one account per applicant can carry the Aadhaar seeding at a time because the money moves through the NPCI Aadhaar Payment Bridge (Common Scholarship Portal). The Directorate states it will not answer for a payment that fails because the applicant gave wrong or inactive bank details (2026 guidelines).

• The physically disabled students from Class I to Class VIII are provided with scholarships ranging from ₹200/-.
• Note: The amount of scholarships may vary as per guidelines of the Government of Nagaland.

What to prepare

Documents required

The income proof is where applications are lost. Nagaland does not accept a general income certificate here. A parent or guardian in a job must file Annexure I, a declaration of monthly salary and other income that the head of the employing office or establishment certifies under seal. A parent or guardian who is unemployed or self-employed must file Annexure II, which has to be typed on non-judicial paper of Rs 20 and countersigned by an empowered judicial magistrate or a notary public in the parent's presence (2026 guidelines). The department's own scheme record spells out the consequence of picking the wrong one: an employed parent who files anything other than Annexure I has the application rejected (scheme record, myScheme).

For the 2026 cycle the Directorate lists the original income certificate in Annexure I or Annexure II format alongside the progress report, the disability certificate or UDID card and the front page of the bank passbook for renewal applicants as well, not only for fresh ones. The application form is also rejected outright if it is incomplete or shows signs of over-writing.

Step by step

How to apply

There is no paper route to the Directorate. Applications are filed online at scholarship.nagaland.gov.in, and the portal also allows the form to be filled through a Common Service Centre. Registration starts with an Aadhaar-linked mobile number and an OTP, after which the applicant completes a profile, and clears a one-time identity check against DigiLocker in which the name and date of birth have to match Aadhaar exactly. Only then does the dashboard open up for a new application (portal application steps).

From the dashboard, the applicant selects the scheme and the Fresh or Renewal category, picks the school by state and district from the portal's list, uploads the scheme documents, previews the whole form, and confirms. Submission locks the form and produces an application ID and a downloadable confirmation PDF, which is worth saving because the form cannot be edited afterwards unless it is rejected.

Tracking happens in the same place. The submitted application appears on the dashboard under Your scholarship applications with status tabs for Draft, Submitted, Rejected and Approved, and the badge moves from Submitted to Under Process to Verified and finally to Approved as officials work through it (portal application steps). For a payment that has not landed after approval, the portal's help desk answers on 9863771513 and 9863386145 between 10:30 AM and 4:00 PM on working days, and each scheme also has a nodal officer for eligibility and status questions (Common Scholarship Portal).

How winners are picked

Selection process

There is no merit list and no published quota of awards. The 2026 guidelines set an eligibility test and then a verification step: District Welfare Officers verify the applications online, and the Directorate fixes the last date for that verification at 15th December 2026, a fortnight after applications close (2026 guidelines). That is the whole of the selection rule the department publishes, which is a real difference from the central schemes, where a fixed slot count and a 50% reservation for female candidates decide who among the eligible actually gets paid, and where meeting the criteria is expressly said not to entitle anyone to an award (DEPwD scheme guidelines).

Fine print

Terms & conditions

The sharpest condition is about honesty in the form. An applicant who gives a false statement, declaration or document, or obtains the scholarship by fraudulent means, is blacklisted and debarred from this scheme and from any other scholarship scheme for the entire period of study, and anything already paid is recovered (2026 guidelines). Correction after online submission is not entertained, so the preview screen is the last chance to fix an entry. The undertaking signed by the head of the school stays live through the year as well, which means a mid-year transfer, a discontinued session or a second scholarship taken up later is meant to be reported to the Director rather than left unsaid.

Get help

Contact

The Scholarship Section of the Directorate of Social Welfare, Nagaland, Kohima, answers scheme questions on 8257866092 and 7005337521, and the portal lists the Scholarship Section as the nodal contact for this scheme (2026 guidelines, scheme list). Login failures, DigiLocker errors and other portal faults go instead to the technical help desk on scholarshipnagaland@gmail.com, run from the Department of Information Technology and Communication below the Civil Secretariat on Thizama Road, Kohima (Common 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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References

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