Learn bits
Schemes & Policies
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 

More Related Current Affairs View All

17 Sep

Reasons Behind the heavy rain in Uttarakhand, Himachal

'Dehradun and several other districts in Uttarakhand have experienced very heavy rainfall over the past few days, triggering landslides in multiple areas and causing rivers to swel

Read More

08 Sep

Rajasthan’s coaching centre Bill

'The Rajasthan Coaching Centres (Control and Regulation) Bill, 2025, is a significant piece of legislation passed by the Rajasthan Assembly to regulate and oversee the state's burg

Read More

28 Aug

IADT-1

'Recently, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) successfully carried out its first Integrated Air Drop Test (IADT-1), a crucial milestone in the preparation for the countr

Read More

India’s First Ai-Driven Magazine Generator

Generate Your Custom Current Affairs Magazine using our AI in just 3 steps