Inspire-She Scholarship For the Brightest Science Students Will Not Be Renewed This Year
New Delhi: The government of India will not renew the INSPIRE SHE scholarship scheme for science students, which has supported thousands of youngsters asipiring for science higher education, in 2026. For weeks, students have been wondering about when the current bacth of scholarships would be notified. "We will not notify this fellowship this year. This is the information we have so far," a Department of Science and Technology (DST) official which hosts the scheme told The Wire over phone.
However, the government has not officially notified students about the decision. A report in Careers360 said the silence has left students wondering about whether the scholarship would be announced open soon or get cancelled.
However, the department official could not say why the scheme was not being offered this year. Instead, details related to the 2026 batch are simply not available on the web site of the DST related to the Inspire schemes.
"We are not in a position to state the reason for the scheme not being notified," said the officer, adding, "Please ask students to keep checking the web site."
SHE in the name of the scholarship stands for Scholarship for Higher Education, although the applicants were typically young students leaving school. INSPIRE stands for Innovation in Science pursuit for Inspired Research.
Previous batches will continue to receive this scholarship.
Over the past few weeks, media reports have said the scheme has not been notified although a new batch of science students leaving school in 2026 has started joining undergraduate institutes that qualify them.
Science scholarships
The DST has three primary scholarships, including Inspire She, Inspire Manak and Vigyan Jyoti. The Manak scheme is for schoolchildren aged 10 to 17 and fetched Rs 10,000 a month after students cleared a three-step selection process. Vigyan Jyoti is meant for girl students studying in the science stream in classes 9 to 12.
Inspire She is in a way a marquee scholarship for the DST. It awarded Rs 80,000 per year to each student who attained the top 1% rank in their Class 12 board exams as they headed for science training at higher levels. Mentoring in the form of a summer research internship was also provided to the successful applicants.
INSPIRE SHE was designed as a multifaceted scheme with multiple interventions through the educational journey of a recipient. Source: DST
It was meant for B. Sc, B.S., M. Sc, M.S. or integrated science programmes in natural and basic sciences, an area in which the government claims it is keen to encourage participation in science research and application. It also covered medical and engineering students (rank holders). Further, other DST scholarship schemes were named after the "inspire" brand.
Inspire's various iterations covered school students to doctoral work (junior and senior research fellowships).
Students aged 17-22 qualified for Inspire She. CBSE as well as state and district education boards were covered by it – around 8,000 scholarships were offered every year, the government of India said in parliament in December 2025.
The government also provided a break-up of the beneficiaries in terms of its diversity, in December 2025.
New idea
The change in status of the Inspire She scheme might have to do with a restructuring of the centrally funded or supported scholarship picture across India, though this has not been clarified officially. The Union government recently consolidated several scholarships under the "Vigyan Dhara" umbrella. From March 2025, it started referring to Vigyan Dhara as the new "catalyst for India’s scientific progress".
Vigyan Dhara was allocated Rs 1,425 crore in 2025-26, later revised to Rs 2,009 crore, and Rs 1,425 crore again in 2026-27. Source: PIB
As a result, Inspire She scheme no longer appears as a separate budget head, while Vigyan Dhara does not reveal components. All the union government has announced so far is that Vigyan Dhara covers science and technology, research and development and innovation, technology development and deployment as separte components.
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