Women Scientist Scheme-A(WOS-A)

Overview

About WOS-A

Two things about WOS-A rarely appear on the same page. The fellowship rates that most listings still quote were replaced by a departmental order in 2024, and the Women Scientist Scheme itself has since been redesigned into a different set of WISE-KIRAN programmes. Both change what a returning researcher should do next, and both are set down in the Department of Science and Technology's own documents.

WOS-A is the research grant DST built for a woman who trained as a scientist, stepped away from the profession, and wants a funded route back to a bench. The applicant writes her own project proposal in basic or applied science, holds it as Principal Investigator at a host institution, and is paid a fellowship out of the sanctioned project fund.

The programme's status is the part worth getting right before a proposal is costed. Answering the Rajya Sabha on 20 March 2025, the Ministry of Science and Technology described the Women Scientist Scheme as having run three components, WOS-A for basic and applied sciences, WOS-B for lab-to-land work and WOS-C for training in intellectual property rights, and said that "following a third-party review, these programs have been restructured into four new initiatives under WISE-KIRAN" (Rajya Sabha reply on support mechanisms for women scientists). The same reply then tabulates WOS-A first among the WISE-KIRAN programmes, with a current rate, a ceiling and a duration against its name, so what it describes is a scheme that has been redesigned rather than one that has been wound up.

DST's divisional page is where that redesign becomes visible. Its programme list runs WISE-PhD, WISE-PDF, WIDUSHI, WISE-SCOPE, WISE-IPR, WINGS, CURIE, Vigyan Jyoti and GATI, each fellowship programme carrying its own call-for-proposals line, and WOS-A appears nowhere on it. Even the team table, which still assigns WOS-B to three named scientists, has nobody listed against WOS-A (DST, Women in Science and Engineering-KIRAN).

Sanctioned WOS-A work has not stopped. DST's detailed demands for grants for 2026-27 book 25 separate WOS-A grants against host institutions, among them Amity University Noida, Birla Institute of Technology and Science Pilani, U.C. College Aluva, Kasturba Medical College at Manipal Academy of Higher Education, and PSG College of Technology (DST, Detailed Demands for Grants 2026-27). What no DST page carries at the time of writing is an open WOS-A call. A woman who wants to start now is therefore choosing among the successor programmes rather than this one.

Who runs it

Provider

At a glance

Key details

Calendar

Important dates

WOS-A never ran on a fixed annual date. It ran on calls, so tracking it means watching two pages rather than a calendar. The first is DST's divisional page, whose most recent fellowship closures are dated 31 December 2024 and 28 February 2025, none of them against WOS-A (DST, Women in Science and Engineering-KIRAN). The second is the active calls table on e-PMS, where a WOS-A row would have to appear before any proposal could be filed, and where none does (e-PMS, Department of Science and Technology).

Who can apply

Eligibility criteria

DST's statement of the WOS-A test to Parliament fits into two lines: the qualification has to be a post-graduation in basic or applied sciences or a PhD in a STEM area, and the applicant has to be between 27 and 57 years old (Rajya Sabha reply, 20 March 2025). Everything else that decides an application sits in the scheme record, which adds the employment condition that gives the grant its purpose and the age relaxation that widens the upper end for reserved-category and physically challenged applicants.

The degree does more than clear the gate. Each qualification carries its own fellowship slab, and in the scheme record its own ceiling on the total project cost, so an M.Sc. holder and a PhD holder can both be eligible and still be writing budgets of very different sizes. That is the detail worth settling before a single line of a budget is drafted, and it is the one most listings compress into a single headline number.

Who cannot apply

Exclusions

A regular or permanent post is the one bar the scheme itself writes down, because re-entry is the whole point of the grant. Two further things end a WOS-A application in practice.

The first is the portal's integrity rule, and it bites at any stage rather than only at submission: e-PMS states that a project proposal will be rejected wherever the Principal Investigator has given the department something incorrect or misleading, and it logs the applicant's IP address for the length of the session (e-PMS, Department of Science and Technology). The second is simpler. With no WOS-A line on the division's own page and no WOS-A row in either proposal table e-PMS maintains, a fresh application currently has nowhere to be filed.

Continuation

Renewal conditions

There is no year-by-year renewal form here. WOS-A sanctions a project for a fixed run of up to three years, and continuation depends on how the work is judged as it goes. In 2023-24 alone, Subject Expert Committees evaluated the progress of 198 ongoing WOS-A projects, and DST extended financial support to 143 ongoing WOS-A projects (DST, Brief Statement of Activities 2023-24). A fellow's work between sanction and closure is to survive that review with reportable science.

What you get

Award & benefits

DST revised the WOS-A fellowship by an office memorandum of 14 February 2024, with effect from 1 January 2023, and the revision reads by qualification rather than as a single headline number.

House rent allowance follows government norms, and the memorandum instructed grantee institutions to pay arrears where the backdating created any. DST's March 2025 reply to the Rajya Sabha quotes only the top of that scale, Rs 67,000 a month, which is the PhD slab.

Around the fellowship sits the project fund, and the two published statements of it do not agree. The scheme record caps the total project cost by qualification, with a separate ceiling written against each of the three slabs. The 2025 reply gives one ceiling for the whole programme instead, up to Rs 38 lakh over three years with the fellowship and HRA counted inside it (Rajya Sabha reply, 20 March 2025). The reply is both the later statement and the one made in Parliament; the slab-linked ceilings belong to the structure that preceded the revision, as do any monthly figures below the revised three.

• ₹ 55,000/- pm (and HRA as applicable) for Ph.D. or equivalent (total project cost not exceeding ₹ 30 lakh)
• ₹ 40,000/- pm (and HRA as applicable) for M.Phil./MTech or equivalent (total project cost not exceeding ₹ 25 lakh)
• ₹ 31,000/- pm (and HRA as applicable) for M.Sc. or equivalent (total project cost not exceeding ₹ 20 lakh)
• This grant will cover the fellowship of the applicant and cost of small equipments, contingencies, travel, consumables, etc.
• The benefits are provided for a period of maximum three years.
• The payment of the scholarship will be through DBT.

What to prepare

Documents required

The paperwork is ordinary; the proposal is not. A WOS-A file is built around a project document that a committee of working scientists will read on its merits, and around two commitments the applicant has to secure herself before she submits: a mentor willing to sign a biodata, and a host institution willing to receive the grant and pay her from it. That second one is visible in DST's grant lists, where the money is booked against the college or university rather than against the fellow (DST, Detailed Demands for Grants 2026-27). An applicant without a laboratory that will take her is not ready to apply, whatever else is in the folder.

Step by step

How to apply

Two addresses are in circulation for this scheme, and only one of them is where DST currently sends anybody. The scheme record points at the dedicated WOS-A portal, online-wosa.gov.in. Every fellowship programme the WISE-KIRAN division now runs is pointed instead at e-PMS, onlinedst.gov.in, which is also where the department posts its proposal formats and its project submission guidelines (DST, Women in Science and Engineering-KIRAN; e-PMS, Department of Science and Technology).

Tracking a filed proposal happens on the portal, not by email. e-PMS advertises status tracking for submitted project proposals as one of its two core functions alongside submission itself, and the account that does the tracking is the Principal Investigator login created through New PI Registration (e-PMS, Department of Science and Technology). Status moves as a proposal clears screening and reaches an expert committee, so a long quiet stretch after submission reflects a queue rather than a lost file.

How winners are picked

Selection process

Merit review by scientists, not a marks-based ranking. Asked in the Lok Sabha on 26 July 2017 whether WOS selections were irregular, DST answered that all three components of the Women Scientist Scheme are monitored by Subject Expert Committees made up of eminent scientists, academicians and practitioners, and that selection rests on the credentials of the candidate and the merit of the proposed research work (Lok Sabha Unstarred Question No. 1785).

Those committees are also the throttle on volume. DST supported 128 women under WOS-A during 2023-24 (DST, Brief Statement of Activities 2023-24), which is the realistic scale of an intake year rather than a mass award.

Fine print

Terms & conditions

Money reaches a WOS-A fellow through her host institution rather than from DST directly, and the backdated revision made that chain visible: the arrears instruction was addressed to the grantee institutions, not to the women owed the difference, and the memorandum recorded that nothing else in the programme's terms had changed (DST, revision of fellowship under WISE-KIRAN programmes). Two things follow for a fellow. Her money arrives on her institution's disbursement cycle, and a shortfall is an institutional conversation before it is a departmental one.

Get help

Contact

The programme sits with the WISE-KIRAN Division at DST, Technology Bhavan, New Mehrauli Road, Block C, Qutab Institutional Area, New Delhi 110016, and portal problems go to the project management support office at pmso.dst@nic.in (e-PMS, Department of Science and Technology).

Two names attach to WOS-A and one of them has moved on. Dr Vandana Singh, whom the scheme record gives as the contact for WOS-A queries, signed the February 2024 fellowship memorandum as Head of the WISE-KIRAN Division (DST, revision of fellowship under WISE-KIRAN programmes). The division's current page gives that post to Dr Umesh Kumar Sharma, Scientist G, across all programmes, and lists no officer against WOS-A at all (DST, Women in Science and Engineering-KIRAN).

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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References

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