Paisa Jaancho
Government scholarships you can actually apply for.
Every central government scholarship open to a college student, and the official scholarship portal of all 28 states and 8 union territories. Free. No agent needed, and no agent should ever be paid for this.
Why we do not print the amounts
Scholarship amounts and family income limits are revised almost every session. A figure we type today can be wrong by next July, and a family that plans around a stale number gets hurt worse than a family that was never told at all.
So this page gives you three things for every scheme: the name, who it is for, and the official link where this year's amount is written. Read the amount there, on the day you apply. That is the only figure that counts.
How this actually works
Most central government scholarships for college students, and many state ones too, are applied for in one place: the National Scholarship Portal. One registration, one One Time Registration number, and from there the portal shows you the schemes you are eligible for.
The window opens in the middle of the year and closes a few months later. It is a hard deadline, with no late window and no appeal, which is why a family that first hears about a scheme in December has already lost that year.
It is free. The portal charges nothing and nobody needs to be paid to fill it. If someone asks you for money to apply for a government scholarship, that by itself tells you what they are.
Open the National Scholarship Portal ↗
Central government schemes
Open to eligible students anywhere in India. Read each scheme's own page for this year's eligibility, income limit and amount.
| Scheme | Who it is for | Where to apply |
|---|---|---|
| Central Sector Scheme of Scholarship for College and University Students | Students who placed in the top slice of their own Class 12 board result and whose family income is under the stated limit. The largest scheme for ordinary merit students, and the one most often missed. | National Scholarship Portal |
| Post Matric Scholarship for Scheduled Caste students | SC students in any recognised course after Class 10, subject to the income limit. | NSP or your state portal, below |
| Post Matric Scholarship for Scheduled Tribe students | ST students in any recognised course after Class 10, subject to the income limit. | NSP or your state portal |
| Post Matric Scholarship for OBC students | OBC students in any recognised course after Class 10, subject to the income limit. | NSP or your state portal |
| PM YASASVI | Students from OBC, Economically Backward Class, and De-notified, Nomadic and Semi-Nomadic Tribe families. | Ministry of Social Justice, applied through NSP |
| Scholarships for students with disabilities | Students holding a disability certificate or a UDID card. Separate post-matric and top-class components exist. | Dept of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities, through NSP |
| Prime Minister's Scholarship Scheme | Wards and widows of ex-servicemen and ex-Coast Guard personnel, with separate provision for wards of those killed or disabled in action. | Kendriya Sainik Board |
| AICTE Pragati | Girl students admitted to an AICTE-approved technical course. One of the few schemes aimed squarely at girls in engineering and management. | AICTE, through NSP |
| AICTE Saksham | Differently-abled students in an AICTE-approved technical course. | AICTE, through NSP |
| AICTE Swanath | Orphans, students who lost a parent, and wards of armed forces or paramilitary personnel who died in the line of duty, in AICTE-approved courses. | AICTE, through NSP |
| Ishan Uday | Students from the North Eastern Region studying a degree course. | University Grants Commission |
| Post Graduate Indira Gandhi Scholarship for Single Girl Child | A girl who is the only child of her parents, entering a postgraduate course. | University Grants Commission |
| National Overseas Scholarship | SC, DNT, landless agricultural labourer and traditional artisan families, for a masters or doctorate abroad. | Ministry of Social Justice |
| Scholarships for wards of registered construction workers | Children of workers registered with a state Building and Other Construction Workers Welfare Board. Widely available, and very widely missed. | Your state labour welfare board |
| PM Vidyalaxmi | Not a scholarship but an education loan, without collateral and without a guarantor, for students admitted to qualifying institutions. | pmvidyalaxmi.co.in |
Schemes are revised, merged and sometimes discontinued between sessions. If you have heard of one that is not on this list, check its current status on the National Scholarship Portal before you count on it.
Five mistakes that get applications rejected
Every one of these is common, and every one of them is avoidable.
1. The college is not registered on the portal
A scholarship application has to be verified by the institution, and an institution can only do that if it holds an institute code on the National Scholarship Portal. If your college does not have one, or has let it lapse, the application stops there no matter how eligible the student is.
Ask the college for its NSP institute code before you pay the admission fee, and ask in writing. A college that is serious about its students will send it back in one line. This single question has saved families an entire year.
2. The bank account is in a parent's name
The money is paid into the student's own account, seeded with the student's Aadhaar. An account in a parent's name, a joint account, or one where the Aadhaar seeding was never completed will fail at the payment stage, after everything else has already been approved.
Open the account in the student's name early, and confirm at the branch that the Aadhaar is seeded, not merely submitted. Those are two different things and only one of them pays.
3. The income certificate is from the wrong year
Income certificates are issued for a financial year and they expire. A certificate that was valid last session is routinely rejected for this one. Get it freshly issued by the competent authority in your district before the window opens, not in its last week when every office in the district has a queue.
4. Nobody renewed it in the second year
A government scholarship is granted one year at a time. Renewal is a separate application with its own deadline, and it normally requires that the student passed and stayed enrolled. Families who assume it continues by itself lose it in year two without anyone telling them.
Put the renewal window in a calendar the day the first payment arrives.
5. Somebody was paid to do it
Applying is free. An agent who charges to fill a government form is taking money for something the government already gives away, and an agent who keeps your documents or your login is a risk to you far beyond the fee.
If you are stuck, send us the question on WhatsApp. We answer for nothing, because Paisa Jaancho is free and will stay free.
State and union territory portals
Every state runs its own schemes on top of the central ones, and these are the schemes families miss most, because they are announced locally and often not in English. Start at your own state's row, then check the central list above as well. You can hold both.
Each link opens the scholarship page itself, not a department's front page. Twenty-one states and union territories run their own scholarship portal, and those are linked directly. The remaining fifteen do not run one: their students apply on the National Scholarship Portal, so that is what their row opens. We would rather send you straight to the form than to a homepage you then have to hunt through.
| State or UT | Where you apply | Which is it |
|---|---|---|
| Andhra Pradesh | Jnanabhumi scholarship portal | State portal |
| Arunachal Pradesh | National Scholarship Portal | Through NSP |
| Assam | National Scholarship Portal | Through NSP |
| Bihar | Medhasoft · Student Credit Card | State portal |
| Chhattisgarh | Post Matric Scholarship portal | State portal |
| Delhi | SC/ST/OBC Welfare, scholarship schemes | State portal |
| Goa | National Scholarship Portal | Through NSP |
| Gujarat | Chief Minister Scholarship portal · Digital Gujarat | State portal |
| Haryana | HarChhatravratti scholarship portal | State portal |
| Himachal Pradesh | HP e-PASS scholarship portal | State portal |
| Jammu and Kashmir | National Scholarship Portal | Through NSP |
| Jharkhand | e-Kalyan scholarship portal | State portal |
| Karnataka | State Scholarship Portal | State portal |
| Kerala | DCE Scholarship portal | State portal |
| Ladakh | National Scholarship Portal | Through NSP |
| Madhya Pradesh | MPTAAS, for ST and SC students · National Scholarship Portal | Mixed |
| Maharashtra | MahaDBT scholarship portal | State portal |
| Manipur | National Scholarship Portal | Through NSP |
| Meghalaya | National Scholarship Portal | Through NSP |
| Mizoram | National Scholarship Portal | Through NSP |
| Nagaland | Common Scholarship Portal | State portal |
| Odisha | Odisha Scholarship Portal | State portal |
| Puducherry | Adi Dravidar Welfare, scholarship schemes | State portal |
| Punjab | Punjab Scholarship Portal | State portal |
| Rajasthan | SJED Scholarship Portal | State portal |
| Sikkim | National Scholarship Portal | Through NSP |
| Tamil Nadu | National Scholarship Portal | Through NSP |
| Telangana | Telangana ePASS | State portal |
| Tripura | National Scholarship Portal | Through NSP |
| Uttar Pradesh | Scholarship and Fee Reimbursement portal | State portal |
| Uttarakhand | Uttarakhand e-Scholarship | State portal |
| West Bengal | This portal did not open when we checked it on 08.09.2026. The address is the scheme's own official one, so we have left it here. If it is still down, apply through the National Scholarship Portal and ask your college office. Swami Vivekananda Merit Cum Means | State portal |
| Chandigarh | National Scholarship Portal | Through NSP |
| Andaman and Nicobar Islands | National Scholarship Portal | Through NSP |
| Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu | National Scholarship Portal | Through NSP |
| Lakshadweep | National Scholarship Portal | Through NSP |
What happened when we opened these. We opened every link on this page on 3 September 2026. Two portals families are often sent to no longer exist at all: Madhya Pradesh's scholarshipportal.mp.nic.in and Tamil Nadu's escholarship.tn.gov.in do not resolve any more, so if a form or an agent gives you those addresses, they are working from old paper. Three state portals did not respond from our connection that day, Andhra Pradesh, Uttarakhand and West Bengal; we have left them in, because a portal that does not answer us on one afternoon is not a portal that is gone. If one does not open for you either, apply on the National Scholarship Portal and ask your college's scholarship cell.
Four things to ask your college in writing
Before you pay the admission fee, not after. A written answer is worth ten verbal assurances.
- What is your institute code on the National Scholarship Portal, and is it currently active?
- Who is your scholarship nodal officer, and what is their direct number and email?
- If a government scholarship is approved, do you adjust it against the fee, or do we pay the full fee and wait for the money?
- Which state schemes have your students actually received in the last two years?
What this page is not
It is not an application service and it is not a promise. We do not decide who receives a scholarship, we cannot influence any decision, and we never charge for this. We have not printed amounts or income limits, because those change every session and the only figure that counts is the one on the scheme's own page on the day you apply.
If a link here is broken or a scheme has changed, tell us and we will correct it, normally within seven days. We would rather be corrected than be wrong.
Not sure which ones you qualify for?
Send us the student's Class 12 result, home state and category on WhatsApp. We will tell you which schemes to apply for and which portal to use. It costs nothing.
Questions people actually ask
What families get wrong about scholarships.
Which government scholarships can a college student apply for?
Central schemes run through the National Scholarship Portal at scholarships.gov.in, and this page lists every central scheme open to a college student with its official link, alongside the official scholarship portal of all 28 states and 8 union territories. Education loan support runs separately through PM Vidyalaxmi. Which schemes a particular student qualifies for depends on course, category, income and state, and CollegeJaancho works that out free under Paisa Jaancho.
Why does this page not print the scholarship amounts?
Because they change. Amounts, income limits and eligibility are revised almost every session, and a figure copied onto a website goes stale quietly, which is worse than no figure at all when a family is planning around it. This page links to each scheme's own page instead, where the current condition always sits.
What is the most common reason a scholarship application is rejected?
Five mistakes account for most rejections. The college is not registered on the portal, so the application has nowhere to land. The bank account is in a parent's name rather than the student's. The income certificate is from the wrong financial year. Nobody renewed the scholarship in the second year, which is a fresh application, not an automatic continuation. And somebody was paid to file it, which is both unnecessary and a common route to a wrong entry.
Should I pay an agent to fill in my scholarship form?
No. Applying on the National Scholarship Portal or a state portal is free, and the student or family can file it directly. Paying somebody to do it adds cost and adds risk, because a wrong entry made by a third party is still the student's rejected application. If help is needed, ask the college's own scholarship desk, and get the portal registration status of the college confirmed in writing.
Which portal does my state use?
This page lists the official scholarship portal for all 28 states and 8 union territories, with the official link for each, next to the central schemes on the National Scholarship Portal. Most students need both: state schemes on the state portal, central schemes on NSP.