Vishesh Yogyajan Chhatravriti Yojana(VYCY)

myScheme carries no opening or closing date for this scheme and the state register calls the duration continuous, which reads as open all year. The rules are stricter than that. A fresh application, carrying the head of the institution's recommendation, has to reach the sanctioning authority by the end of August, or within one month after the results of the previous examination are declared, whichever falls later, per the guidelines. The sanctioning authority may extend that last date by a fortnight through a general or specific order; any extension beyond it rests with the Director.

The rest of the calendar is fixed by the same rules. Registered forms are scrutinised within a fortnight of receipt. Sanctions are issued by the end of September, or within twenty days of an application arriving, whichever is later. Disbursement is then drawn in windows rather than monthly: the July to October period is drawn in October and the November to February period in February. Against that, the department's citizen charter allows the district officer 6 months from a complete application to dispose of it, with the Additional Director as the escalation.

Three papers decide this application, and the rest is process. You need the disability certificate at or above the threshold, evidence that the parent or guardian's annual income stays inside Rs 2.00 lakh, and the previous year's marksheet showing a pass, all three set out in the department's scheme register and in the record printed on this page.

The institution test is about recognition, not ownership, and that trips up more families than the income line does. The rules the department still publishes as this scheme's guidelines open the school leg to regular students of class 1 to 8 in schools run by the government, panchayat samitis or municipalities, and to any other school recognised or aided by the Education Department of Rajasthan, and they carry a separate clause for paying students of private schools. A recognised private school is inside the scheme. An unrecognised one, or a coaching arrangement standing in for school, is not.

One caution on the income figure, because the state publishes two. The department's older listing of the same disability scholarship still sets the guardian's ceiling at one lakh rupees a year, half of what the current scheme register and the myScheme record both state, and both pages are live today. Ask the district office which figure it is applying for the session you are filing in, before you spend a fortnight collecting an income certificate against the wrong one.

myScheme publishes no exclusion list for this scheme, so the disqualifiers have to be read out of the rules, and they are real. A student already drawing a scholarship, award, stipend or allowance from any government, or from a public or charitable organisation, or from any other source, is out from the start, which is why the declaration on that point is part of the file rather than an afterthought.

Failing the last annual examination stops the money, but the guidelines suspend rather than end it: the scholarship is discontinued for that year and can be sanctioned again once the student passes an annual examination in a later year. Months in which the school itself did not run are written out of the payment as well, which is why a sanctioned amount and a paid amount are rarely the same number.

Renewal is a fresh application on its own prescribed form, not a rollover of the sanctioned file. The guidelines keep a separate renewal form and carry the same requirements across to it, the head of the institution's recommendation and the same last date, so the paperwork rhythm repeats every session.

The pass rule doubles as the renewal test. The rules set no second merit bar, write in no fresh disability assessment at renewal, and put no ceiling on the number of years a student may keep drawing the rate. Two other things end it mid-stream, and both are certified by the school rather than caught at renewal: the undertaking the head of the institution signs on the application form has the scholarship stopped for a student who leaves study in the middle of a session or who accepts another scholarship, with any excess already paid returned to the state account.

The scholarship is paid as a monthly rate rather than a one-time award, and it steps up with the stage of study. Classes 1 to 4 draw Rs 40 a month and classes 5 to 8 draw Rs 50 a month. From class 9 the department's rate card splits into three columns: a day-scholar rate, a higher residential rate, and a separate reader's allowance published only for blind students.

Fee reimbursement is the second half of the benefit, and unlike the rate it is not published as a fixed figure. The department reimburses the fee amount for specially-abled students of the general category studying in post-matric classes, under departmental order 37012 dated 2 July 2010, issued in compliance with the 2010-11 budget announcement, per the same rate card; the current scheme register describes the reimbursement as running for general and other backward class students as per rules.

The rate is not paid for the calendar year but for the months you were actually studying. The guidelines make it payable from the month of admission up to the month the examination is completed or the session closes, whichever comes earlier, at the rates above or as the government fixes them from time to time.

The document list is printed in the record on this page. What that list leaves out is who has to sign each paper, and that is where files stall. The guidelines want the medical certificate from a civil assistant surgeon at a government hospital, and the income certificate on the prescribed form attested by a gazetted officer, the head master of the institution, a Member of Parliament or MLA, the chairman of a municipal board, a zila pramukh or a panchayat samiti pradhan. A declaration that the student is not drawing any other scholarship goes in with them.

The department's scheme register adds the practical split on proving income: an affidavit where the father or guardian is self-employed, and an income certificate from the employer where he is in service, along with attested copies of the previous year's marksheet. The prescribed form is stricter about the first of those than the register is, requiring the self-employed parent's affidavit on non-judicial stamp paper, so a plain written statement will not do.

The form is not locked inside the district office either. The department publishes the fresh-application version of it on its own disabled-schemes listing, and it comes in two halves. Part "ka" is the student's, and its opening note tells students of government and recognised aided schools that the completed form is addressed to their principal. Part "kha" belongs to the head of the institution, who names the course and class, certifies that the institution is affiliated to a university or board and recognised by the state or central government, and states in whose name and for which place the draft is to be drawn. That last line is worth reading before the form is handed over, because it is what fixes where the money will eventually land, and the form warns that a rubber stamp in place of a signature will not be accepted.

For classes 1 to 8, the route is entirely offline and entirely local. Collect the prescribed form from the district office of the Social Justice and Empowerment Department, get the head of the institution's recommendation on it, and file it there with the documents, as the department's scheme register instructs. The officer who sanctions it is the District Social Welfare Officer, named on the department's own scheme listing.

From class 9 upward the file leaves the district counter altogether. The same scheme register states that applications for study from class 9 and above are invited on the Government of India's online portal at scholarships.gov.in, so the form, the timetable and the verification chain for a college student belong to that portal and not to the district office. The department publishes no separate state-side window for that leg, which is why the rate card is the only thing on the state side that still speaks to those stages.

Tracking is where the two legs separate again. The department runs a scholarship application status check on its own SJMS system, and the single box on it wants the scholarship application number issued when your file is registered, in the numbering pattern the page prints beneath the box as its example. There is no name or date-of-birth lookup behind it, and nothing on the page reconstructs a number a family has lost, which makes that slip the one piece of paper worth copying twice the day the district office accepts the file.

Nothing here is decided by comparing one applicant against another. The guidelines have the sanctioning authority receive the forms, enter them in a prescribed register, scrutinise them and issue the sanction on a prescribed form; an applicant whose form is found incomplete is informed at the earliest and advised to complete it, rather than having the file thrown out. Selection is a check against the eligibility conditions, so an eligible student who files on time and completes the file is not competing against anyone.

Where a rule is read two ways, the same rules send the question to the Director of the department, whose interpretation they make final. That matters most for the borderline cases, a school whose recognition is in question or a disability percentage assessed differently by two boards.

Attendance is the condition that catches sanctioned students, not applicants. The head of the institution has to certify regular attendance for the period being paid, and a month in which attendance falls below fifty per cent is not paid at all. The exception written into the guidelines is medical: a continuous absence of up to three months on medical grounds, supported by a certificate from a government hospital and the head of the institution, is paid in full. Leave on any other ground does not qualify.

Part months are decided by two boundary dates. No scholarship is payable for a month in which the school did not commence before the twentieth, or in which the student joined after the twentieth; none is payable for a month in which the school closed on or before the ninth, or in which the student left before the ninth.

The money reaches a school student through the institution. The sanctioning authority sends the amount by demand draft to the head of the institution, or to the block development officer for panchayat samiti schools, and those officers have to hand it over to the students at the earliest and within one month; whatever stays undisbursed goes back to the sanctioning authority within two months. Students of private schools are paid by the sanctioning authority directly, and the accounts of disbursed and returned amounts are maintained in prescribed registers.

The state has since started describing the payment differently without rewriting those rules. The scheme register records the mode of disbursement as the direct bank account of the beneficiary, while the rules on the same page still route a school student's draft through the head of the institution. Treat the school as the place to ask first and keep the bank details current anyway, because nothing published resolves which of the two a given district is working to.

The scheme is owned by the Directorate of Specially Abled Persons in Jaipur, and the state's scheme register names its Deputy Director as the designated officer for receiving applications, with Dir.Dsap@rajasthan.gov.in as the directorate's published address.

In practice the file lives in the district. The district office of the Social Justice and Empowerment Department issues the form, receives it and sanctions it, and the department's citizen charter names the Additional Director as the officer to approach when a district file has not moved inside the service standard.