A press conference in regard to the disbursement of post-matric scholarship for ST students of Nagaland for the academic year 2024-2025 was held at the Directorate of Higher Education on 17th June 2025.
OSD, Higher Education department, Keduosielie Keyho and OSD, Higher Education Department, Tol Pucho briefed the status of the post matric scholarships and stated that the funding pattern is Centrally Sponsore with a ratio of 90:10, funded by the Ministry of Tribal Affairs, Government of India and Government of Nagaland.
They highlighted that the beneficiary status for 2024-25 and mentioned that the total number of beneficiaries is 41,793 requiring an amount of Rs. 5,638.06 lakhs however, the available amount is Rs. 3,070 lakhs (CS-2728.89+SS-341.11).
They also briefed that a phase-wise payment shall be implemented as the amount available is not enough to cover all the beneficiaries and therefore payments have to be made in a phased manner.
They stated that in the first phase, 3070 lakhs will be disbursed to 22,000 (52.64%) beneficiaries. One-time full scholarship will be released to these beneficiaries and out of 41,793 beneficiaries, the system has authenticated 30,451 beneficiaries, the remaining 11,342 beneficiaries could not be authenticated by the system, for which auto-generated SMS have been sent to their mobile numbers with the required instruction/information. The remaining beneficiaries will be covered in the next phase after receiving the funds from the funding agencies.
They also mentioned that in the previous years, payments were made on an instalment basis, where all the beneficiaries received a percentage of their scholarship depending on the availability of funds released by the funding agencies. They said that the disbursement of scholarships will now be done through the National Scholarship Portal for the first time since the Implementing Agency onboarded the Portal in 2024. In the previous years, payments were made through the Public Financial Management Systems (PFMS). The previous system of partial payments (instalment-wise) to all beneficiaries is not feasible (no provision) under NSP. Therefore, from the year 2024-25, a one-time full scholarship amount will be disbursed in a single payment, but in a phased manner.
Payments through the NSP will be Aadhaar-based payments. The beneficiary will receive his/her scholarship in his/her bank account which is linked with the Aadhaar. All beneficiaries are required to seed their bank accounts with Aadhaar and enable their bank accounts for DBT Payments.
Payment through NSP will fulfil the objectives of Aadhaar-Based Payment and End-to-End Digitisation as mandated by the Government of India, they added.
(Siizo Kikhi, IA)
