State Post-metric Scholarship For Disabled(SPMSD)

Overview

About SPMSD

Maharashtra pays this scholarship from its own budget and asks nothing about what a family earns. The Persons with Disabilities Welfare Department publishes five course groups with a monthly rate against each, running from Rs 230 at the school end to Rs 1,200 for a degree course in medicine, engineering, agriculture or veterinary science, and its eligibility list runs to five lines: the course level, no fail in the previous year, a minimum 40% disability, domicile of Maharashtra, and no income limit (Persons with Disabilities Welfare Department, Government of Maharashtra). The route is where students lose the money. The scheme's public record lists its application mode as offline and carries no application link, so the form being searched for is a hard copy that moves through the college (myScheme, Government of India).

The money is a maintenance allowance paid month by month, not a fee waiver and not a one-time award. It follows a student with a disability from the school leaving stage through degree, diploma, professional, technical, medical and engineering study, and the funding is the state's own, so a sanction waits on no central release (Persons with Disabilities Welfare Department, Government of Maharashtra).

Finding the scheme in writing is harder than it should be, for two reasons. The Persons with Disabilities Welfare Department was formed as an independent department on 15 December 2022 (Persons with Disabilities Welfare Department, Maharashtra, department introduction), and the scheme is now published in that department's state government scheme list, while the record a student reaches first still names the Social Justice and Special Assistance Department as its owner and points at sjsa.maharashtra.gov.in pages that no longer open. Second, the coverage widened: the Government Decision of the Social Justice Department dated 13.09.2022 brings students with disabilities in the 21 categories of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 within the scheme (Persons with Disabilities Welfare Department, Government of Maharashtra).

The department sizes the population it works for from Census 2011, which counted 29,63,392 persons with disabilities in Maharashtra, 2.63% of the state's population then, across the 7 disability heads recognised at the time (Persons with Disabilities Welfare Department, Maharashtra, department introduction). Both the Act and the 2022 Government Decision came after that count, so the group now inside this scheme is wider than the census description of it.

Who runs it

Provider

At a glance

Key details

Calendar

Important dates

Neither the department's scheme page nor the scheme's public record publishes an opening or a closing date, and the record's open and close dates are both blank (myScheme, Government of India). What governs the year in practice is the college's own collection window, since the college forwards the file: ask whoever handles scholarships at your institution when it closes collection and treat that as the real deadline, because the district office only ever sees what the college has sent it.

Who can apply

Eligibility criteria

The department's eligibility list has five lines and a means test is not one of them: study after Class 10 up to H.S.C., degree, professional, technical, medical and engineering courses; not having failed in the previous year of education; a minimum 40% disability; domicile of Maharashtra; and, in its own words, no income limit (Persons with Disabilities Welfare Department, Government of Maharashtra).

That last line is worth more to a Maharashtra family than anything else on the page. Almost every other scholarship a student with a disability gets pointed towards, the central post-matric scheme included, closes at a stated family income; this one names no ceiling, and its document list asks for no income certificate. A household that is turned away elsewhere on earnings is not turned away here.

On disability type, the department's own note names visual, hearing, speech and locomotive disability, mental illness and multiple disability among the 21 heads under the 2016 Act (Persons with Disabilities Welfare Department, Maharashtra, department introduction). What the sanctioning office actually reads is the percentage: the certificate has to certify a minimum 40% disability, whichever head it was issued under (Persons with Disabilities Welfare Department, Government of Maharashtra).

Who cannot apply

Exclusions

Neither the department's page nor the scheme's public record prints an exclusion clause. In practice the bars are the eligibility conditions read the other way round: no Maharashtra domicile, a certificate under 40%, a class below the post-matric line, or a fail in the previous year (Persons with Disabilities Welfare Department, Government of Maharashtra).

One bar sits outside this scheme's own text. The central post-matric scholarship states that a holder under it will not avail any other scholarship or stipend, and that no scholarship is paid from the date the student accepts another one (Persons with Disabilities Welfare Department, Maharashtra, central post-matric scholarship). The two are therefore not held together, and it is the central rule that closes that door rather than a Maharashtra one.

Continuation

Renewal conditions

The scheme publishes no renewal form and no renewal window. The condition doing a renewal test's work is the no-fail rule, which is written into the eligibility list itself and so has to be met in each year of the course rather than once at entry (Persons with Disabilities Welfare Department, Government of Maharashtra).

The rate table assumes a student who moves up. Group E covers Class 11 and the first year of a degree, Group D starts from the second year of a degree, and the professional and postgraduate groups sit above both, so the sanctioned amount changes as the year of study changes (Persons with Disabilities Welfare Department, Government of Maharashtra).

What you get

Award & benefits

The maintenance allowance is monthly and set by course group. The department prints two rate columns against each group and gives both the same heading, "Rate of Scholarship per month in Rs.", so nothing on the page says which column belongs to a hosteller and which to a day scholar. The scheme's public record does answer that question, and it answers it both ways: it puts a postgraduate day scholar on the second figure in Group A and a professional education diploma hosteller on the second figure in Group C, and one column cannot be both (myScheme, Government of India). On its own central scheme page the same department does label the columns Day Scholars and Hostellers (Persons with Disabilities Welfare Department, Maharashtra, central post-matric scholarship); on the state scheme it does not. So take the pair below as what is published, and get the figure that applies to your case confirmed by the office that sanctions the file.

Three add-ons sit on top of the maintenance allowance and go unclaimed more often than the allowance itself. Blind and low vision students draw a reader allowance of Rs 100 a month in Groups A, B and C, Rs 75 a month in Group D and Rs 50 a month in Group E. Study tour expenditure is reimbursed up to Rs 500 a year and project typing expenditure up to Rs 600 a year. Tuition fees are payable as approved by the competent authority, which means the sanctioned figure tracks the fee that authority has cleared for the course rather than a cap written into the scheme (Persons with Disabilities Welfare Department, Government of Maharashtra).

What to prepare

Documents required

The district office works to a fixed document set, and two items in it carry more weight here than they would in a portal-run scheme. The disability certificate is the eligibility test itself rather than a formality, because the office reads the percentage on it and a certificate under 40% ends the file whatever head it names (Persons with Disabilities Welfare Department, Government of Maharashtra).

The bonafide certificate is the second, and it matters because the college here is the channel and not merely a referee: the institution that certifies the enrolment is also the body that forwards the application. The residential or domicile certificate for Maharashtra is listed separately from the Aadhaar card in the scheme's own document set, so one does not stand in for the other, and the domicile document is the one a student from outside the state cannot produce.

Step by step

How to apply

The department's instruction is a single line: apply in the prescribed format and submit it with the necessary documents through the college (Persons with Disabilities Welfare Department, Government of Maharashtra). The prescribed format is collected as a hard copy from the district office rather than downloaded, and the scheme's public record lists the application mode as offline with no application link (myScheme, Government of India).

That works out as a four-step sequence: collect the printed form from the District Social Welfare Office of your Zilla Parishad, or from the Assistant Commissioner, Social Welfare Office if you are in Mumbai Urban or Mumbai Suburban; fill it; attach the certificates; hand the set to the college, which forwards it to that same office (Persons with Disabilities Welfare Department, Government of Maharashtra).

Tracking a submitted application. No scholarship portal will show a status for this one, because no portal received it, and a student refreshing a National Scholarship Portal dashboard is watching a different scheme's file. The status sits with the office that sanctions it, so the follow-up is with that district office. Where a file stops moving, the department publishes its escalation routes: the Aaple Sarkar grievance portal for Maharashtra, the central CPGRAMS portal, and a WhatsApp chatbot on 7821922775 (Persons with Disabilities Welfare Department, Maharashtra, grievance portals). A 24x7 citizen contact centre is published on 1800 120 8040 (Persons with Disabilities Welfare Department, Maharashtra, contact page).

How winners are picked

Selection process

There is no ranking step here. The department publishes eligibility conditions and a rate table with nothing in between: no merit list, no marks cut-off, no reserved quota (Persons with Disabilities Welfare Department, Government of Maharashtra). A file that clears domicile, a 40% certificate, enrolment in a course inside one of the five groups and the no-fail condition is a file the district office can sanction, which is also why the only useful place to ask about your own application is that office rather than the department in Mumbai.

Fine print

Terms & conditions

The scheme is the state's own and the institution has to be one the Government of Maharashtra recognises. Who counts as a student with a disability for it is fixed by the Government Decision of the Social Justice Department dated 13.09.2022, tied to the 21 categories of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 (Persons with Disabilities Welfare Department, Government of Maharashtra). The no-fail condition is a yearly condition rather than an entry condition, and the domicile requirement admits no exception: a student domiciled outside Maharashtra stays outside this scheme even while studying inside the state.

Get help

Contact

Sanction is local. For most of the state the office is the District Social Welfare Office at the Zilla Parishad; for Mumbai Urban and Mumbai Suburban it is the Assistant Commissioner, Social Welfare Office (Persons with Disabilities Welfare Department, Government of Maharashtra). The contacts list the scheme record points at, on the Social Justice department's site, no longer opens, so work from the current department's own contact page instead.

The Persons with Disabilities Welfare Department itself sits at 31, 32, 35A A Wing, 3rd Floor, Mittal Tower, Barrister Rajani Patel Marg, Nariman Point, Mumbai 400021, and publishes an office number of 022-40145176 (Persons with Disabilities Welfare Department, Maharashtra, contact page). Write there about the scheme and go to the district office about your own file.

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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