Swami Vivekananda Single Girl Child Fellowship for Research in Social Sciences(SVSGCFRSS)

Overview

About SVSGCFRSS

The University Grants Commission built this fellowship around one narrow test, and then stopped advertising it. Its own note on women-oriented schemes records that the scheme was launched in 2014-15 and was later "re-launched in 2022 as the Savitribai Jyotirao Phule Fellowship for Single Girl Child, with only previous cases being processed" (UGC, women-oriented scholarship and fellowship schemes). The scheme record below is the record as the government still publishes it, and it describes the fellowship in the present tense. Read it as the rulebook governing a file already open, not as a call for applications.

This was a doctoral award with a subject wall around it. The money went to a woman already registered in a regular, full-time Ph.D. in a social-science subject, who was the only child of her parents. UGC ran it directly through its Selection and Awards Bureau; it was never an Indian Council of Social Science Research award, even though ICSSR funds doctoral work in the same disciplines.

Very few scholars ever drew it. The government told the Rajya Sabha in December 2017 that the scheme reached 44 beneficiaries in 2015-16 and 77 in 2016-17 across the whole country (Press Information Bureau, Scholarships to girls). Grant sanctioned under the scheme was Rs 3.04 crore in 2016-17, Rs 4.70 crore in 2017-18 and Rs 4.74 crore in 2018-19, falling to Rs 1.05 crore in 2019-20 up to June 2019, in the reply tabled in the Lok Sabha to Unstarred Question No. 3121 on 11 July 2019 (Lok Sabha, Higher Education for Minority Girls).

UGC's Student Corner today lists two fellowships for students, and this is not one of them (UGC Student Corner). A social-science research scholar who lands on the scheme record in 2026 has found a rulebook, not an open call.

Who runs it

Provider

At a glance

Key details

Calendar

Important dates

No cycle is running, so the date fields on the scheme record have nothing to hold. While the fellowship was live UGC put out one advertisement per block year and left about a month on the clock, and the opening cycle is the one whose dates survive on the public record.

Who can apply

Eligibility criteria

The scheme record sets out who qualified. Two things it leaves unsaid are what an old file actually turns on.

The first is the date the age ceiling was read on. The scheme guidelines and the first advertisement both fixed that ceiling, 40 years for the general category and 45 for SC, ST, OBC and physically handicapped candidates, at the time of admission to the Ph.D. course (UGC guidelines, Swami Vivekananda Single Girl Child Fellowship, UGC advertisement, Swami Vivekananda Scholarship for Single Girl Child), where the record as published now reckons it as on the last date for submitting the online application. A scholar whose paperwork dates from the advertisement years is judged by her admission date.

The second is that recognition of the institution had to be proved rather than assumed. The guidelines asked for proof of admission to a Ph.D. in a recognised Indian university covered by the relevant sections of the UGC Act, and for a separate certificate from the university or institute where the candidate had taken admission, so a scholar registered outside that recognition had no paper capable of carrying her claim forward.

There was no means test at any point. The conditions run to the sibling position, the subject, the mode of the programme, the institution and the age, and no annexure in the scheme asks for an income certificate.

Who cannot apply

Exclusions

The scheme record leaves this blank, so the operative bars are the ones written into the guidelines rather than into the eligibility list. The tenure was meant to be exclusive. A fellow was to hold no appointment anywhere, paid or unpaid, take nothing from a second scholarship, and receive no pay of any kind from another quarter while UGC was funding her. A Ph.D. registered in distance mode fell outside the scheme from the start, whatever the standing of the university offering it (UGC guidelines, Swami Vivekananda Single Girl Child Fellowship).

Continuation

Renewal conditions

Continuation was a paperwork rhythm, not a fresh application. The fellow filed a continuation certificate every three months, signed by the head of her department and forwarded by the Registrar or Director, and a progress report on the research signed by her guide and head and routed through the same office. Each further release waited on the utilisation certificate and the statement of expenditure for the money already paid. A change of research centre was permitted once in the whole tenure, and only against no-objection certificates from both the centre being left and the centre being joined. Five years was the wall: no extension was permissible beyond it, and the fellow ceased to be a UGC research fellow the moment it passed (UGC guidelines, Swami Vivekananda Single Girl Child Fellowship).

What you get

Award & benefits

The rate card sits in the scheme record below. What the prose can add is what the scheme cost the exchequer, and what it is still paying out.

Payment did not stop when the advertising did. UGC reports Rs 1.88 crore disbursed to 117 beneficiaries of this scheme during the period its women-oriented schemes note covers, while it worked through the cases already on its books (UGC, women-oriented scholarship and fellowship schemes).

• Financial Assistance
• The financial assistance available under the scheme is as follows: Fellowship @ ₹25,000/- per month for the Initial two years; @ ₹28,000/- per month for the remaining tenure.
• Contingency @ ₹10,000/- per annum for initial two years; @ ₹20,500/- per annum for remaining tenure.
• Escort Reader Assistance @ ₹2,000/- per month in case of PWD candidates.
• The number of slots for the fellowship may be decided every year on the basis of eligible applications
• complete in all respects, received through online mode.
• The tenure of the fellowship is for five years and will be effective from 1st April of the selection year or the actual date of joining under the fellowship in the University/College/Institute, whichever is later. Fellowship will be granted up to the date of submission of Ph.D. Thesis or 5 years of tenure whichever is earlier. No extension is permissible beyond the total period of five years, and the fellow ceases to be a UGC research fellow immediately after the expiry of the due date.
• Suitable single-seated hostel accommodation may be provided to the candidates in the institutions. In such cases, the fellow is eligible to draw only hostel fees excluding mess, electricity, water charges, etc. A certificate to this effect is to be furnished through the Registrar/Director/Principal. HRA is not permissible for those candidates who are staying in Hostel accommodation.
• In case of non-availability of hostel accommodation, the fellow may be provided with single accommodation by the host institution. In such cases, the rent paid by the fellow on an actual basis may be reimbursed subject to the ceiling of HRA as per Govt. of India norms.
• If the fellow makes her own arrangements of accommodation, she may be entitled to draw HRA as per the categorization of cities by the Govt. of India.
• Note: In all the above cases, the fellow will submit a relevant certificate (Annexure-VI) through the concerned University/College/Institute to the identified Agency for settling the claim.
• No separate/fixed medical assistance is provided. However, the fellow may avail of the medical facilities available in the Universities/Colleges/Institutes.
• Leave for a maximum period of 30 days in a year in addition to the public holidays that may be taken by the candidate. However, they are not entitled to any other vacation, such as summer, winter, and pooja vacations.
• Maternity leave as per the Govt. of India norms issued from time to time would be available at full rates of the fellowship once during the tenure of their award.
• Academic leave (without fellowship and other emoluments) shall be permissible only for one year throughout the tenure (for any kind of academic/teaching assignment/foreign visit in connection with research work). The period of leave without fellowship will be counted towards the tenure. Expenditure on foreign visits in connection to research work cannot be claimed by UGC
• Note: All kinds of leave should be approved at the level of the University/College/Institute.

What to prepare

Documents required

The record lists the identity papers. The two formats UGC drafted itself are what a file is really judged on, and one of them is not the candidate's document at all.

The affidavit runs in wording UGC printed in advance, and the proforma is written for the father or mother to depose: the parent swears that the candidate is a single girl child, a twin daughter or a fraternal daughter, and that there is no other male or female child in the family (UGC guidelines, Swami Vivekananda Single Girl Child Fellowship). A birth certificate cannot stand in for it, and neither can a school record naming one child, because the sworn negative about other children is the entire point of the document.

The joining report is countersigned by the head of department and the Registrar or Director alongside the awardee, and it carries the bank account number and IFSC code the fellowship is paid into. On a legacy file that line matters more than any academic paper: a dormant account is a payment problem, not an eligibility problem.

The guidelines also called for undergraduate and postgraduate marksheets, which is a curious ask in a scheme that never ranked anybody on marks.

Step by step

How to apply

There is no live application route, and there has not been one for years. UGC advertised the fellowship once a block year and gave it a short, hard-edged window. In the first cycle the online form went up on 31 October 2014 and closed on 30 November 2014, marked non-extendable, with the Commission stating that no application in hard copy would be entertained "in any circumstances whatsoever" (UGC advertisement, Swami Vivekananda Scholarship for Single Girl Child). The address that advertisement gave for the form, ugc.ac.in/svsgc, now lands on UGC's error page. A single girl child beginning a social-science Ph.D. today has to look instead at UGC's current doctoral fellowship for a single girl child, which is the scheme that replaced this one.

How to Track an Old Application or a Pending Payment

UGC has put its wound-up fellowship files behind one door. Its Student Corner carries a quick link named "Web Portal for Fellowship/Scholarship Legacy Cases", and that link points to the Canara Bank scholarship portal, which is where a fellow of a closed UGC scheme checks the state of her file and her instalments (UGC Student Corner).

The money is a separate question from the file, and it has its own public check. PFMS publishes a payment lookup on its Know Your Payment page that returns credits routed through the system against a bank name and an account number (PFMS, Know Your Payment). The scheme record marks this fellowship as a direct benefit transfer scheme, so the account named in the joining report is the one to query. The UGC portal tells a fellow whether her file has moved; the PFMS lookup tells her whether the money has.

How winners are picked

Selection process

Nobody sat a test for this fellowship. UGC put the applications to an expert committee it constituted for the scheme, and that recommendation was the whole of the merit process. The result went up on the UGC website, and the award letter was downloaded against the identifier the online form generated when it was submitted (UGC guidelines, Swami Vivekananda Single Girl Child Fellowship). Records of candidates who were not selected were not kept beyond three months from the date the result was declared (UGC advertisement, Swami Vivekananda Scholarship for Single Girl Child), so an unsuccessful application from those years leaves nothing to appeal against.

By the end, the committee was rationing nothing. UGC records that there is no limit on the number of fellowships awarded each year, "consequently, all eligible applicants were able to receive fellowships" (UGC, women-oriented scholarship and fellowship schemes). That is a long way from where it started. The guidelines put the slots at 300 every year (UGC guidelines, Swami Vivekananda Single Girl Child Fellowship), and the first advertisement offered exactly that number for the block year 2014-15 (UGC advertisement, Swami Vivekananda Scholarship for Single Girl Child).

Fine print

Terms & conditions

The exit clauses carried real money. A fellow who discontinued her research without UGC's prior approval was liable to refund the whole amount, remitted by RTGS or NEFT directly into the UGC account, and a candidate found ineligible at a later date faced penal action on top of returning everything already drawn. Leaving with permission ran differently: the guidelines wanted an application setting out the justification, forwarded by the university or institution, and UGC's approval before the fellow stopped work.

On completion the fellow owed UGC a soft copy and a hard copy of the thesis, a certificate of completion signed by the competent authority, and an audited utilisation certificate routed through the institution where she had worked under the scheme (UGC guidelines, Swami Vivekananda Single Girl Child Fellowship).

Get help

Contact

These files are held at UGC's head office on Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg in New Delhi 110002. For students the Commission publishes one email address, contact.ugc@nic.in, and two board numbers, 011-23604446 and 011-23604200 (UGC Student Corner). A question about an unpaid instalment belongs on the legacy-cases portal rather than at the head office, and a grievance nobody answers can be lodged on e-Samadhaan, UGC's grievance redressal portal, listed on the same page.

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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