New Delhi: The Union Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment has issued provisional scholarship awards to less than half of those selected, or just 40 of the 106 candidates selected for its National Overseas Scholarship (NOS) for the forthcoming academic year, 2025-26. It has said that letters for the remaining 66 candidates “may be issued… subject to availability of funds”, as per a report in The Hindustan Times.

The ministry has said it has not got clearance from Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs. This cabinet committee is chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The newspaper has cited an announcement made by the Modi government on July 1 as saying that “Provisional award letters to the remaining candidates (from serial number 41 to 106) in the selected list may be issued in due course, subject to availability of funds.”

The NOS programme was instituted in 1954-55. It provides financial support to students from Scheduled Castes (SC), Denotified Nomadic Tribes (DNT), semi-nomadic tribes, landless agricultural labourers, or traditional artisan categories, with a family income under Rs 8 lakh per annum.

Usually, all selected students have received provisional scholarship letters, but this year the ministry has sent out letters in what it is suggesting is a phased manner dependent on availability of funds, This, reports the newspaper, has left “students in a lurch.”

The ministry has bounced off the matter of paucity of funds to a cabinet committee.

“It is an issue with the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs not approving the money allocated to these scholarship schemes. We have the money, but we also need the green signal from above to give it out,” an official of the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment is quoted as telling The Hindustan Times.

Scholarship crisis not the first

Earlier, a similar disruption was reported in the Maulana Azad National Fellowship (MANF). More 1,400 PhD scholars have faced stalled stipend payments since January 2025. The Wire reported in June, on how the majority of these researchers have not received their stipends from December 2024 up to at least May 2025. In fact, some researchers have not received their stipends even prior to this period.

The Maulana Azad National Fellowship, administered by the Ministry of Minority Affairs, offers financial assistance to researchers belonging to six notified minority communities in India: Muslim, Christian, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, and Parsi.

There was also chaos over the National Fellowship for Scheduled Castes for June 2024, for which the list was only published in April this year. The National Testing Agency initially released a selection list with 865 scholars in March 2025 but a ‘revised list’ in April, cut down selections to 805 and removed 487 previously chosen candidates.

LoP letter to PM

Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi wrote to PM Narendra Modi citing the “deplorable” conditions of hostels and scholarship disbursements on June 10. He wrote that students from the Dalit, Scheduled Tribe (ST), Economically Backward Class (EBC), Other Backward Class (OBC), and minority sections of society were particularly affected.

Gandhi called out the case of Bihar as an instance, where the scholarship portal allegedly remained non-functional for three years. He said no scholarships were therefore given out for the 2021-22 academic year.

He wrote about a sharp decline in beneficiaries, “The number of Dalit students receiving scholarships fell by nearly half, from 1.36 lakh in FY23 to 69,000 in FY24,” while adding that “students further complain that the scholarship amounts are insultingly low”.

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