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Mahesh

14/08/25 09:09 AM IST

Post and pre-matric scholarships

In News 
  • Ahead of the upcoming financial cycle spanning FY 2026-27 to FY 2030-31, the Union government is considering revising the parental income limit for eligibility in availing post and pre-matric scholarships administered to students from marginalised castes and tribes.

New limit 
  • These scholarships require eligible candidates to have parental annual income below ₹2.5 lakh.
  • The Ministry of Tribal Affairs is looking to raise parental income limit to ₹4.5 lakh for post and pre-matric ST scholarships, and the Social Justice Ministry is discussing revising the limits for post and pre-matric scholarships for Scheduled Castes (SCs), Other Backward Castes (OBCs), and Denotified Tribes (DNTs).
  • In addition, discussions are also on to raise the parental income limit of college and school scholarships for OBCs, and DNTs.
About Scholarships 
  • The post and pre-matric scholarships for SCs, Scheduled Tribes (STs), and OBCs, are run as central sponsored schemes by the government.
  • This means that it is funded by both the Union and State governments on a 60:40 ratio (Union:States), except for in northeast States where the ratio is 90:10.
  • The post-matric scholarships for SCs, STs, and OBCs, require the student to be an Indian national, studying at the post-matric stage, that is, after 10th grade.
  • Pre-matric scholarships are mostly available to students of grades IX and X, but for SCs pre-matric scholarships are available from grades 1 to X, if their parent or guardian is involved in a “unclean or hazardous” occupation.
  • Both post and pre-matric scholarships require students’ annual parental income to be below ₹2.5 lakh to become eligible.
  • In the ongoing fiscal year’s budget estimates, centrally sponsored scholarship schemes for SCs, OBCs, Extremely Backward Classes (EBCs), and DNTs accounted for 66.7% of the Social Justice Department’s ₹13,611 crore allocation.
  • In the Tribal Affairs Ministry, centrally sponsored scholarship schemes for ST students accounted for about 18.6% of the department’s ₹14,925.81 crore allocation for FY 2025-26.
Drop in Scholarships 
  • According to available government data, tabled in Parliament and submitted before House panels, the number of beneficiaries for post and pre-matric scholarships across socio-economic groups has been falling.
  • This showed that from 2020-21 to 2024-25, there was a 30.63% drop in the number of beneficiaries for pre-matric scholarships for SCs.
  • In the same time period, beneficiaries for SC post-matric scholarships dropped by 4.22%.
  •  A similar drop was seen in post-matric scholarships for these sections in the same time period, reducing from 43.34 lakh beneficiaries to 38.42 lakh.
  • For STs, there was a drop of 4.63 lakh beneficiaries in this time period for pre matric scholarships, and a drop of 3.52 lakh beneficiaries for post-matric scholarships.
Source- The Hindu 

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