UGC-BSR Faculty Fellowship Scheme(UGCBSRFFS)

This award never ran on a calendar, so it has no opening or closing date to publish. What ended it was a notice rather than a deadline.

The scheme document itself is still up, listed as the revised guidelines on UGC's Basic Scientific Research page alongside the recommended and not-recommended lists, which is why its terms are still quoted in places as though a window were open. A published document is not a call. If a fresh one comes, it will surface on UGC's own pages rather than on an aggregator, and the coordinator's site is no longer online to carry it.

What UGC tested here was a laboratory that was still running, not a distinguished career, and the tests do not all look at the same stretch of time. The doctoral-supervision requirement counts a career total, with a smaller number of those degrees required in the preceding 10 years; the sponsored-project requirement looks only at the last 10 years, and only at projects held as Principal Investigator; the cumulative impact factor is read across the applicant's published papers off the Journal Citation Reports, with no window on it and no weighting for authorship position, in the guidelines. A professor whose later years went into administration could therefore hold a strong lifetime record and still fail on the tests that ask what the last decade produced.

The guidelines also carry a hard clock that is easy to read past: the application had to be filed within one year of the date of superannuation, and the fellowship's tenure was counted from that date rather than from the award.

Several disqualifications sat outside the guidelines altogether, on the coordinator's scheme FAQ. Faculty of a university's affiliated colleges were not eligible; nor was ad hoc or temporary faculty; nor faculty of an NIT, IISER or IIT; nor faculty appointed under UGC's Faculty Recharge Programme. Any grant under the promotion schemes could be availed only once, so a Start-Up Grant or a Mid-Career Award already taken closed the door.

The ban on administrative charge runs the length of the tenure and is the only exclusion the scheme record carries. The others are about money, and one of them falls on the university rather than the fellow: no fund was allocated under overhead charges for these schemes, so a department hosting a fellow took no share of the grant for its own costs, the FAQ states plainly. On the fellow's side, international travel and furniture stood outside what the research grant could buy, per the guidelines.

An earnings condition sits on a form rather than in the eligibility list, which is why it is easy to miss. The joining report has the university certify that the fellow receives no emoluments from any other source after joining, which leaves no room for a paid re-employment or a second fellowship running alongside this one.

There was no second term to apply for. The tenure was written as one block of three years, capped by the age of 68, and no renewal clause exists in the guidelines at all. Extension was not quite impossible, though: the coordinator's FAQ published a route for it, sending a Faculty Fellow's request for extension of tenure by post to the Section Officer of the BSR Bureau at UGC's New Delhi office, with no online form and no stated terms, on the FAQ.

What recurs regardless is paperwork, and it gates the money. A Continuation Certificate at the end of every three months is what makes the fellow eligible to draw the next quarter; after the first year of the award the fellow submits and presents an abstract of the progress report in about 1000 words; and contingency accounts go in on UGC's own proforma, all set out in the guidelines. The quarter that goes uncertified is the quarter that goes unpaid.

The annual grant is the unusual part: Rs 5,00,000 a year, split across the permitted heads at the fellow's own discretion, is a working laboratory budget rather than a contingency, on the guidelines. The fellowship UGC now lists for faculty who have superannuated matches the Rs 50,000 monthly payment but sets contingency at Rs 50,000 a year, on UGC's scheme page. An experimentalist with instruments to buy was better served by the older design, by a wide margin.

Two document sets belong to this scheme, and only the first was ever the applicant's problem. Three PDFs went up with the form, according to the archived FRPS scheme page: a complete list of publications giving, for every paper, its serial number, title, all authors, journal, year, volume, page and the journal's impact factor; grant-related information, meaning a one-page proposal with the planned utilisation; and a certificate from the university in the prescribed format.

That certificate is Annexure-I of the guidelines, signed by the applicant and countersigned by the Registrar, Principal or Director, confirming that general physical facilities such as space and furniture exist in the related research department and accepting the Commission's power to terminate and recover. The second set arrives only after selection, once there is an award letter to quote against, and the payment side of it is where Aadhaar appears: the guidelines cite a Ministry letter, D.O. No.18-7/2013-U1A of 10 June 2016, making Aadhaar mandatory for the disbursement of government fellowships.

There is no live route into this scheme today. The designated site is gone, no UGC page carries a form for it, and any page inviting applications to it in the present tense is describing the guidelines rather than an open call.

While it ran, the mechanics were unusually simple. There was no annual call and no advertised closing date: the scheme stayed open throughout the year, on the guidelines and again on the FAQ, which also records that no hard copy of the application was needed. Everything went online to a site operated for UGC by the National Coordinator, Faculty Research Promotion Schemes, at the School of Chemistry, University of Hyderabad. Because the department's undertaking travelled with the form, the university had to sign before the professor could submit, so the real deadline was always the registrar's desk.

A professor retiring now is looking at a different scheme and a different page. UGC lists a Fellowship for Superannuated Faculty Members among its research awards, and that page publishes terms but carries no form, so the call has to be watched for on the Commission's own site.

Where a Pending Case Can Still Be Chased

Outcomes here were published rather than posted to applicants one by one. UGC's Basic Scientific Research page still carries the recommended and not-recommended lists for the Faculty Fellowship, and the last batch the coordinator's site announced, covering the Start-Up Grant, the Mid-Career Award and the Faculty Fellowship together, went up on September 10, 2021, on the archived FRPS scheme page. It was UGC's New Delhi office, not the coordinator, that notified results, issued the sanction letter and released the grant, and that is the office the FAQ names for a query about status after a result. Queries on these schemes go to bsrsection.ugc@gmail.com, and the Basic Science Research bureau page records that the fellowship is disbursed through the UGC Canara Bank SFMP in DBT mode. A fellow still drawing on an award should check the quarterly certificate first, since that is the document a release is keyed to.

Two readers stood between the file and the money, and neither of them met the applicant. The National Coordinator went through the applications, evaluated them and made recommendations; the Empowered Committee for Basic Scientific Research in Indian Universities took the final decision on those recommendations, under the guidelines. Nothing in the scheme's documents describes an interview, a presentation or a written test, which is why the publication list and the impact-factor total carried the whole file: they were the only evidence in it. A decision took about 8 to 10 weeks in the normal course, on the FAQ.

The scale explains the odds better than any success rate could. Counting from July 2013, the coordinator's own grant statistics record 129 Faculty Fellowship grants against 871 Start-Up Grants and 98 Mid-Career Awards, out of 1098 in total. It was always the narrowest of the three schemes, and the one with the highest bar.

The undertaking is joint. The fellow executes it to UGC along with the university, agrees to abide by UGC's norms for the fellowship as they change from time to time, and commits to a bi-annual progress report plus a utilisation certificate and an annual audited statement of accounts, on the guidelines.

The university's side is stronger than a formality. Annexure-I commits the institution to completing the work within the stipulated period and accepts that if the Commission is not satisfied with the progress it may terminate the project immediately and ask for a refund of the amount already received. Paired with the ban on administrative responsibility for the whole tenure, the arrangement assumes a fellow doing bench work and a department carrying the overheads on its own budget.

UGC handles the scheme through its Basic Science Research section, and asks that queries on these schemes go to bsrsection.ugc@gmail.com. The bureau is headed by a Joint Secretary and lists 011-23232568 on its page; for grant release, results and sanction letters the coordinator's FAQ pointed applicants to UGC's New Delhi office on 011-23217892, 23230144 and 23604409, on the FAQ. General correspondence goes to the head office at Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg, New Delhi 110002, on 011-23604446, or to contact.ugc@nic.in.

The scheme's other office, the National Coordinator at the School of Chemistry, University of Hyderabad, is not reachable any more: its site is gone, so the addresses printed on the archived pages should be treated as historical.