An amount of Rs. 70.00 crore has been allocated in BE 2015-16 for National Means-cum-Merit Scholarship Scheme.
The estimated number of beneficiaries under this scheme during 2015-16 is 205000.
96521 scholarships pertaining to previous academic years has been sanctioned under the scheme with an expenditure of Rs. 58.61 crore during current financial year. The scholarships for the academic year 2015-16 could not be sanctioned as the proposals for disbursement of scholarships for academic year 2015-16 have so far not been received from the State / UT Governments on-line on National e-Scholarship portal, made operational in October 2015.
A National e-Scholarship Portal for on-line submission of scholarship proposals/ beneficiaries’ lists by the States has been developed by the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) under Prime Minister’s Digital India Initiative. The portal has been made operational for the National Means-cum-Merit Scholarship Scheme (NMMSS) in October, 2015. This information was given by the Union Human Resource Development Minister, Smt. Smriti Irani today in a written reply to a Rajya Sabha question.