Travel Grant Scheme for College Teachers/Vice Chancellors/Commission Members(TGSCTVCCM)

Overview

About TGSCTVCCM

The person this scheme pays for is a teacher, not a student. It sends a permanent college teacher to an international conference abroad where a research paper of theirs has been accepted, and it opens the same door to a narrow set of office holders: vice-chancellors of state, deemed and central universities recognised under Sections 2(f) and 12(B) of the UGC Act, members of the Commission itself, and UGC officers of Education Officer or Under Secretary rank and above.

Its present condition matters more than its wording. UGC's most recent published annual report, for 2023-24, still carries the scheme, files it under Faculty Development, and describes it in the present tense. That report records four college teachers assisted during the year, two of them women, against a total of Rs 5.30 lakh, in the UGC Annual Report 2023-24. Three years earlier the same table counted 161 beneficiaries and Rs 2.18 crore, in the UGC Annual Report 2020-21.

Read that decline carefully before reading it as a closure. UGC has published no order winding the scheme up, it still lists a Travel Grant bureau among the Commission's bureaus with a Joint Secretary and an Under Secretary posted against it on the UGC bureaus page, and every annual report through the latest one describes the terms as current. What has shrunk is the money moving through it, and the honest reading is that the scheme is alive, sanctioning a handful of cases a year, on a rulebook nobody has refreshed. The operative document is still the Twelfth Plan version, written for a plan period that ran from 2012 to 2017, which UGC links from its own XII Plan guidelines index. A teacher applying now applies under that.

Who runs it

Provider

At a glance

Key details

Calendar

Important dates

Two months is the only fixed quantity in this scheme's calendar, and it is counted backwards from a date UGC has no hand in setting. The myScheme record carries no open date and no close date because there is no round to open; what starts a file is an organiser's acceptance letter, and everything after that is measured against the conference itself.

The two-month rule is the one that quietly disqualifies people, because it is counted from the conference and not from the acceptance. An acceptance that lands inside that window leaves nothing to file, so the application is worth starting the day the acceptance letter exists rather than once the visa and tickets are settled.

Who can apply

Eligibility criteria

Two tests run at once: one on the person, one on the paper.

On the person, the Travel Grant Scheme guidelines admit a permanent teacher or a permanent librarian of a college enlisted under Sections 2(f) and 12(B) of the UGC Act, a vice-chancellor of a state, deemed or central university with the same recognition, a member of the Commission, and a UGC officer at Education Officer or Under Secretary level and above. Permanent teachers of Institutions of National Importance are admitted too, but rationed: their cases may not exceed 10 per cent of the total approved in a year. Age is handled differently by category. A college teacher, a librarian or a UGC officer stays eligible up to superannuation, measured on the date of participation; a vice-chancellor or Commission member has to be in position when the conference is held.

Note who is missing from that list. A teacher in a university department, as opposed to a college, is not named anywhere in it unless they happen to be the vice-chancellor. Neither is a research scholar, a temporary or contract lecturer, or anyone still studying. The word permanent does real work here, and the application form asks the applicant to state whether the appointment is permanent or temporary.

On the paper, the conference has to be international and abroad, and UGC's annual reports narrow it further by describing the objective as presenting papers at international conferences conducted by foreign educational institutions. The paper must already be accepted. The form requires the acceptance letter, the full text, and the mode of presentation, and it treats presiding over a session or delivering a plenary or invited talk as roles that also need documentary evidence.

Who cannot apply

Exclusions

Four things sink a case, and none of them is a judgment on the research.

The first is the co-author. The form sets aside one numbered slot for the names and addresses of every co-author and a second for their no-objection certificates, and the rule those slots exist to serve is a rationing rule: a single paper buys a single sanction, and the first author holds the prior claim on it. The second is the college's own standing. The head of the institution certifies that the college is fit to receive assistance under Section 12(B), and the guidelines state that if the institution is later found not fit, the grant stands cancelled automatically even after approval. The third is double funding: if the organisers or another agency pay for any part of the trip, the applicant declares it, and anything received after the UGC sanction has to be paid back. The fourth is simple incompleteness, and UGC is blunt about it, saying incomplete applications will not be considered and that no correspondence will be entertained about them.

UGC does not gather these into a published bar list, which is why the scheme reads more permissive than it behaves. They sit scattered through the application form and the certificate the principal signs.

Continuation

Renewal conditions

Two waiting periods run under this scheme, and which one an applicant is on turns on who they are rather than on what the last trip cost. A college teacher or librarian comes back after three years. A vice-chancellor, a Commission member, a UGC officer, or a teacher from the SC, ST or OBC non-creamy-layer categories or with a physical disability comes back after two. Nothing renews in between, because the sanction closes when the claim is paid, and the wait is enforced on paper rather than by a database: item 28 of the application form in the Travel Grant Scheme guidelines asks whether the applicant has taken UGC assistance for a seminar, conference or symposium in the preceding two or three years, with the sanction letter number and date, and the head of the institution separately certifies that the provision has not been availed inside that window.

What you get

Award & benefits

UGC has published the college teacher's share twice, at two different levels, and never withdrawn the lower one. That lower figure sits in the version filed under UGC's Tenth Plan documents, and it is what the scheme's myScheme record still carries: a college teacher limited to 50 per cent of admissible expenditure once in three years, with vice-chancellors and Commission members at 100 per cent, in that older text. The Eleventh Plan guidelines raised the college teacher to 100 per cent, and the Twelfth Plan set kept it there. Every annual report since has stated the same thing: permanent teachers and librarians of 2(f) and 12(B) colleges are paid 100 per cent, once in three years.

No rupee ceiling appears anywhere in the guidelines. What limits the grant instead is the list of admissible items and the rate rule attached to each one. Airfare is reimbursed on the cheapest available ticket in excursion category, and in no case above the Air India fare for that sector. The domestic leg from the college headquarters or residence to the nearest airport and back is capped at AC II class rail fare, and a journey by taxi or private car is reduced to that same ceiling or to road mileage. Train or bus fare from the arrival airport abroad to the conference town and back is admissible on receipt, as are the registration fee, airport tax and visa fee. Daily allowance follows the Government of India's own rates and is paid for the length of the conference plus four days, two before and two after, which absorbs the travel; where the journey is shorter than that, only the actual journey period is paid. That allowance is inclusive by design and covers board, lodging, incidentals and local travel, and no separate per diem may be claimed on top of it.

The daily allowance is computed in US dollars on the claim proforma and then converted, which is why UGC asks for a conversion-rate certificate from a bank or other financial institution along with the bill. Nothing is released before departure: the whole amount due moves in a single instalment once the conference is over and the claim has gone in. The mandate form for that electronic transfer is filled in with the bank details of the principal, dean or director, so the account the money reaches is the institution's, not the applicant's own.

• The financial assistance for permanent teachers of colleges enlisted in 2(f) and 12 B of the UGC Act will be limited to 50% of the total admissible expenditure such as travel, registration fee, per diem allowance and visa fee, once in three years. - For Commission members and Vice-Chancellors of Universities enlisted in 2(f) and 12 B of the UGC Act, the assistance will be 100% on admissible expenditure once in three years.

What to prepare

Documents required

The scheme's list of enclosures is published; what is not obvious is how particular UGC is about their form.

The acceptance letter has to be on the organiser's letterhead and signed by the organiser, and where the acceptance or invitation arrived by email, the organiser's full details have to be supplied with it. The abstract and the full paper both go in, along with a copy of the registration form showing the fee. The certificate from the head of the institution is a document in its own right, and the Twelfth Plan version asks for the college's Section 12(B) inclusion letter to be enclosed with it rather than merely referenced.

At the claim stage the paperwork tightens again. The statement of account, the utilisation certificate from the college or university auditor or a chartered accountant, and the bank mandate form each have a prescribed proforma appended to the guidelines. Original cash memos and receipts are expected, and where photocopies are unavoidable the applicant signs them. Every enclosure is to be paginated, and no overwriting or correction is permitted on the claim bill or the utilisation certificate. These are the instructions on which claims are returned.

Step by step

How to apply

Offline, by post, to a named desk. The prescribed application form goes to the Joint Secretary (Travel Grant), University Grants Commission, Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg, New Delhi 110002, with every enclosure attached, and it has to reach UGC at least two months before the conference begins, per the Travel Grant Scheme guidelines. The applicant files it personally, but it does not leave the campus unsigned: the head of the institution completes and seals the certificate on the last page first.

Older summaries of the scheme send the file to the Secretary instead. That is where the Tenth Plan text addressed it, before the travel grant acquired a bureau and a Joint Secretary of its own, and it is worth checking which version a departmental circular is quoting.

UGC did once move this application online, through a scheme portal on which the college or university had to be registered before any of its teachers could apply, with a printout of the online form to follow by post, as its own circular to universities set out and Gondwana University reproduced. That route is not what the current published guidelines describe, and the scheme's myScheme record still lists the application mode as offline with no application link at all. Treat the postal route as the operative one and confirm with the bureau before doing anything else.

One category applies differently. A UGC officer does not need the Chairman's prior approval to send a paper to a conference; once the paper is accepted, the officer applies for assistance in the ordinary way.

Following Up When the Approval Letter Does Not Come

There is no acknowledgement number, no status page and no tracking of any kind in the guidelines. The only signal an applicant gets is the approval letter, which UGC sends after the decision, and the guidelines warn plainly that submitting a proposal does not by itself mean it has been approved.

That leaves two real routes. The first is the Travel Grant bureau itself, which UGC lists with a Joint Secretary and an Under Secretary and publishes direct telephone numbers and email addresses against on its bureaus page. The second is e-Samadhaan, UGC's single-window grievance system, launched on 5 September 2022 in place of the older student grievance portal according to the UGC Annual Report 2023-24. Its login screen carries Teaching Faculty as a user type of its own, so a stalled case can be registered there rather than only chased by telephone.

How winners are picked

Selection process

A proposal is read by subject experts before the Commission ever sees it, and only a file complete in all respects gets that far. The annual reports add the machinery around that reading: an expert committee constituted by the Chairman, whose recommendations the Commission then considers. Proposals from vice-chancellors, Commission members and UGC officers skip that route and are approved by the Chairman directly. An approval letter follows the decision.

UGC publishes no scoring rule, no weighting between the paper and the applicant's publication record, and no quota by discipline or state. The only visible rationing device is the 10 per cent annual cap on cases from Institutions of National Importance. Given how few sanctions the recent annual reports record, the binding constraint looks more like the size of the year's allocation than any published selection formula.

Fine print

Terms & conditions

The undertakings the applicant signs are stronger than the grant. The applicant certifies that the details given are correct and that if anything is later found to be incorrect, the entire amount will be repaid to the Commission; that the money will be used only for the purpose it was requested for; that any assistance received from the organisers or another agency will be paid back to UGC; and that the Commission's decision will be abided by. The head of the institution countersigns the accuracy of all of it.

The reimbursement is netted, not stacked. The claim proforma asks the applicant to declare assistance received from any other funding body, naming INSA, DST, ICAR and CSIR as examples, and UGC reimburses only the balance after that is deducted. One cancellation needs no decision at all: a college found not fit under Section 12(B) loses the grant automatically, approval or no approval. All of this sits in the Twelfth Plan guidelines and its appendices, which is the document a query will be answered against.

Get help

Contact

The scheme is run by a dedicated bureau rather than a portal helpdesk. UGC lists TG (Travel Grant) among its bureaus, with a Joint Secretary as bureau head and an Under Secretary as the working contact, and publishes a telephone number and an email address against each on the UGC bureaus page. Both the application and the post-conference claim are addressed by name to the Joint Secretary (Travel Grant), at the Commission's headquarters on Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg in New Delhi. For a grievance about a stalled case rather than a question about the rules, e-Samadhaan offers teaching faculty their own login category, separate from the student one.

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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