The Union Social Justice Ministry is in the process of seeking additional allocation for administering the National Overseas Scholarship scheme for marginalised students, officials told The Hindu, days after the ministry withheld provisional award letters to 66 selected candidates “subject to availability of funds” in the 2025-26 cycle.
On July 1, the Ministry declared the results for the 2025-26 cycle of the NOS, saying that 106 students had been selected for the 125 annual slots available. But it added that only the first 40 candidates will be given provisional award letters, and the rest will get the letter “subject to availability of funds”.
The Ministry administers this scholarship for students from Scheduled Caste, Denotified, Semi-Nomadic, and Nomadic Tribes, landless agricultural labourers and traditional artisans, backgrounds, for pursuing postgraduate studies in top universities abroad.
This is the first time in at least three years that the 1st round of results for the NOS has seen the selection committee unable to fill all 125 available slots. Further, the applications received for the scholarship also dropped to a low of around three years to about 440. This comes even though the Budget Estimates for 2025-26 showed the scheme receive the highest allocation it has in around five years of ₹130 crore.
A senior government official said, “We are seeking more allocation to administer the scheme. The allocation this year is higher than others. But what must be considered is that the scholarship is paid out through the period of education of the candidates. So, a part of this year’s allocation must be used for this as well, that is for candidates selected in previous years and continuing their studies. As a result, the ministry is seeking more allocation and soon this will be worked out.”
Notably, the fund-crunch for the National Overseas Scholarship administered by the Social Justice Ministry comes even as the government is in the middle of evaluating the scheme in time for the 16th financial cycle, which will be beginning from Financial Year 2026-27. “All the issues in administering the scholarship are being considered. The evaluation is currently underway,” the official said. The evaluation is part of the government’s procedure to check how the scheme is performing and decide if it should be continued.
Earlier this year, the Departmentally-related Parliamentary Standing Committee on Social Justice and Empowerment, had pointed out several issues with the gamut of scholarship schemes administered by the ministry. Among them, the panel had noted that the amounts of scholarships were not enough, the slots for schemes like NOS needed to be increased, and the issue of scholarship disbursals spilling onto the next year, year after year.
