Government considers raising parental income limit for post and pre-matric scholarships for Scheduled Tribe students
Officials told The Hindu that the procedure for review of schemes ahead of the next financial cycle is already underway for both the Tribal Affairs and Social Justice Ministries. One official said the Social Justice Ministry is expected to hold a stakeholder meeting with State governments in the last week of August, where potential revisions to all schemes, including scholarships for SCs, OBCs, EBCs, DNTs, will be on the agenda as well.
In a House panel report tabled in Parliament on Monday (August 11, 2025), it was further revealed that the Tribal Affairs Ministry is in the process of raising the parental income limit for post and pre-matric scholarships for ST students to ₹4.5 lakh.
Further, in a similar parliamentary report tabled in the House last week, the Social Justice Ministry said discussions were on to revise the parental income limits for post and pre-matric scholarships for OBCs and top-class scholarships for schools and colleges for OBC, Extremely Backward Classes, and Denotified Tribe.
A second official said procedure required ministries to submit a proposal to the Expenditure Finance Committee (EFC) for such revisions between September and November, which is the regular cycle for this, adding that the final approval for any revision would lie with the EFC.
The Union government administers scholarships for students from SC, ST, OBC, Denotified Tribe backgrounds at various levels of education, through the Ministries of Social Justice and Tribal Affairs. These include post and pre-matric scholarships, top-class scholarships for schools and colleges, national scholarships, overseas scholarships, etc.
60:40 ratio
While some of these are funded fully by the Centre as Central sector schemes, the most widely availed scholarships in pre and post-matric levels are funded on a 60:40 (Union:States) ratio as Centrally sponsored schemes. Most of these scholarships have a parental income limit for eligibility.
Parliamentary panels for welfare of OBCs and the departmental House panel for Tribal Affairs have separately noted in reports tabled earlier this year that most post and pre-matric scholarships have set the parental income limit at ₹2.5 lakh/year, recommending that these limits should be increased so that the coverage of the scholarship schemes can be expanded. Both committees are headed by Bharatiya Janata Party MPs.
Apart from these, the government administers schemes like the National Overseas Scholarship for STs, where the family income limit is set at ₹6 lakh/year, National Overseas Scholarship for SCs, where the limit is ₹8 lakh, and the National Fellowship, under which the income limit for OBCs is at ₹8 lakh and for EBCs, is at ₹5 lakh. National Fellowships for SCs and STs, for higher education programmes leading to PhD, do not prescribe an income limit.
In Social Justice Ministry, Centrally sponsored scholarship schemes for SCs, OBCs, EBCs, and DNTs accounted for 66.7% of the Department's ₹13,611 crore allocation for this financial year (2025-26). 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.
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