Vyasakabi Fakir Mohan Bhasabruti Scholarship(VFMBS)

The Bhasabruti has no standing calendar. The Higher Education Department fixes a window for each academic year, opens it on the State Scholarship Portal and advertises it in the English and Odia dailies, which is why the scheme's myScheme record carries neither an opening nor a closing date.

Two department office orders show how that window behaves once it is open. In one round the dateline for online validation by principals and heads of institutions was pushed back after the department found the validation response poor, by office order. In another the department extended both student submission and institutional validation, and issued that extension for the undergraduate level alone, by an order sent to the state's newspapers for publication. An extension is a reprieve the department grants when the applications are short, never one a student is owed, so treat the closing date first announced as the real one.

For the 2026-27 cycle, Buddy4Study's scheme article still lists the application start date, the last date and the selection list declaration as yet to be announced. Until the department publishes its advertisement, no date circulating for this scheme is a departmental one.

Under the revised guidelines, the undergraduate award goes to students who scored at least 70% aggregate in the +2 Examination, conducted by CHSE, Odisha or an equivalent board, and who have enrolled in +3 Arts with Odia as the Honours, core or major subject at a university, degree college or autonomous college, whether the institution sits inside Odisha or outside it; Buddy4Study records the same 70% bar and the in-or-outside-Odisha rule. That marks two departures from the scheme's earlier shape, which had asked for 60% and only recognised the CHSE board: the bar is higher, and pass-outs of other boards now have a route in.

The postgraduate award keeps the older threshold: at least 60% in the Odia Honours papers of the +3 Arts final examinations, followed by admission to an M.A. (Odia) course, per the same Buddy4Study article. Marks in other subjects do not enter the PG calculation; the department looks at the Odia papers alone.

Both clauses of the revised guidelines open with the words irrespective of their domicile, so a listing that still tells readers only Odisha domiciles may apply is quoting a superseded rule. Residence is documented, since the paperwork asks for a residence or nativity certificate, but under the current text it is not the eligibility test.

Timing is part of eligibility, not a formality. Applications are accepted only during the first year of the course, so a second-year Odia Honours student who missed the window has no way back into the scheme for that degree. Every category may apply, General included, and holding another scholarship does not disqualify anyone.

Students pursuing the course through distance learning or correspondence are outside the scheme; only regular enrolment counts. In practice two more situations close the door. Odia taken as a pass or elective paper does not satisfy the guidelines, which name Odia as the Honours, core or major subject, so a B.A. student with Odia as a subsidiary cannot apply. And an application the college never validates goes nowhere, because the revised guidelines route every form through the institution's own confirmation before the department sees it.

Renewal is not part of the Bhasabruti's design: a selected student receives the money as a single payment, and no year-two claim exists. The department's official answers describe the scholarship as covering the complete duration of the course, which means the single payment is all the scheme provides for that degree, not that money arrives annually. The undergraduate and postgraduate awards are separate categories with separate applications, each filed in the first year of the respective course.

The amounts differ by level, a change from the scheme's early years when both levels drew the same figure.

The split of the annual target between the two levels is the department's own, set out as a two-row table in the portal guidelines for the scheme, and the revision that lifted the postgraduate amount left the target untouched.

Payment does not pass through the college. The department disburses directly into the student's own savings account through IFMS, the state treasury system, in DBT mode, which is why the guidelines insist the account be in the applicant's name, Aadhaar-linked and active. A dormant or joint account is the most avoidable way to have a sanctioned payment fail.

Beyond the standard list, the paperwork has specifics worth knowing before the window opens. The residence certificate must come from the competent authority, the Tahasildar or Additional Tahasildar of your area; the revised guidelines let children of Odisha government employees substitute a residence verification document from the parent's employer, and require students studying outside Odisha to upload a nativity or residence certificate. For the bank proof, a scanned first page of the passbook showing the account number and the branch IFSC is what the portal expects.

A missing college ID card does not block an application. The guidelines accept a letter validated by the college authorities in its place, so long as it states the academic year, the course name and duration, and the student's roll or registration number. Have the mark sheet of the qualifying examination ready in a clean scan, since the marks on it are what the whole selection turns on.

Applications go through the Odisha State Scholarship Portal at scholarship.odisha.gov.in, not through the National Scholarship Portal. Registration starts from the Aadhaar number; the portal sends login credentials to the registered mobile or email, after which you select the scheme under the Higher Education Department's list, fill the personal, academic, eligibility and bank sections, upload the documents and submit. Buddy4Study adds a step the department's own instructions do not carry, printing two hard copies of the submitted application with the uploaded documents for the Principal or head of institution; ask your college whether it wants them, because the paper set is not what triggers validation.

The college is not a bystander in this scheme. The confirmed application is forwarded automatically into the institution's SAMS login, where the head of the institution verifies that the student is genuinely in the first year of Odia Honours or M.A. (Odia), checks the residence, marks and bank details, and forwards eligible applications to the department, per the scheme guidelines. Those same guidelines instruct institutions to collect no fee of any kind for processing or validating a scholarship application, so treat a demand for money at any stage as a fraud signal.

To track what happened after submission, use the portal's Know Your Status service: it accepts either the Aadhaar number or the application number, sends a one-time password to the registered mobile, and then shows the application's current stage. Checking there beats calling the college office, because the stage shown tells you whether the institution has validated and forwarded the form yet.

Selection is arithmetic, not assessment. Undergraduate applicants are ranked on their aggregate marks in the +2 examination; postgraduate applicants on the marks secured in the Odia Honours papers of the +3 finals; and when eligible applicants exceed the 1,500 target, a common merit list decides who gets in, as Buddy4Study summarises from the scheme's rules. There is no interview, no income verification round and no document beyond the application itself.

One consequence of the revised guidelines deserves attention: the institute enters and certifies the marks used for PG ranking in the application form at validation time, and the guidelines hold the institute's nodal officer and scholarship cell accountable for entry errors, including cases where an eligible student loses the award because of one. If your marks look wrong in the application preview, get the college to correct them before validation closes, not after the selection list is out.

The grant can be availed only once, and recipients of other scholarships remain eligible, two conditions the scheme listing states plainly. No stage of the application carries a charge, by the department's own written instruction to institutions. The bank account receiving the money must belong to the student, not a parent, and must be operative when disbursement runs. The revised guidelines supersede every earlier version issued for the scheme, so where an older document and the current one disagree, the current one governs.

Queries about the Bhasabruti end up at its nodal department: Higher Education, Government of Odisha, Bhubaneswar, 751001. The department's helpdesk email is scholarshiphedgov@gmail.com and its phone line is 0674-2396550, both listed on the Buddy4Study scheme page; govtschemes.in additionally records the 155335 helpline for scholarship queries, the line the department's own guidelines name the Sanjog helpline. For an application that has stalled, file a complaint through the portal's grievance module from your student login as well as calling: the module keeps the complaint on record and lets you view its status later.