Key Points

The awareness session in Uttar Pradesh covered the Districts of Baghpat, Bulandshahr, Gautam Buddh Nagar, Ghaziabad, Hapur, Meerut, Muzaffarnagar, Saharanpur, and Shamli, the Ministry of Education said.

In her welcome address, the Chairperson highlighted that the NMMSS is a merit scholarship scheme implemented to help children from economically weaker sections complete their schooling, especially at the secondary level from Class IX to XII. She pointed out that the State of Uttar Pradesh has the highest allotted quota of 15000 fresh scholarships annually and asked the officials to focus on the timely verification of the students' applications on the National Scholarship Portal (NSP) so that the deserving children receive their scholarship.

The NMMSS has been onboarded on the National Scholarship Portal since 2018-19 and the students selected on merit after class VIII based on a written exam are to get themselves registered on the National Scholarship Portal in Class IX using their own or one of their parents' Aadhaar cards.

The students are first to get their One Time Registration done on the NSP portal, after which they are to apply for the scholarship of their choice. Apart from NMMSS, the scholarship schemes of other Central Ministries and States/UTs are onboarded on the portal. To avoid duplication of scholarship benefits to the same students, the NSP had introduced the OTR in 2024-25, as per the release.

During the Awareness Session, DoSEL explained and demonstrated the process of registering on the NSP, highlighting common errors that students should avoid when applying for the OTR and scholarship. The session also covered the process of registration and verification by the Nodal Officers (teachers) at the school level, who undertake the first level of verification of the students' applications on the NSP and the second level of verification, which is done at the District level by the District Nodal Officers.

Under NMMSS, there are only two levels of verification, one at the school level and the other at the district level, following which the applications get reflected on the NSP. While the students apply for fresh scholarships in class IX, the students of class X, XI, and XII apply for renewal scholarships on the portal. States/UTs conduct selection exams every year to select fresh students eligible for the merit scholarship, while renewal students become eligible based on the 60% marks scored by them and get promoted to the next class level.

The NMMSS is a pre-matric scholarship scheme open only to students studying in government and government-aided schools and excludes KVS, NVS and other government residential schools.

To facilitate the selected children register and apply for the scholarship on the NSP using biometric authentication with their Aadhhar card, and the two level verification to be done on the portal after biometric authentication of the Nodal Officers using their Aadhaar card, the Department has embarked on conducting Orientation Sessions with the States/UTs to familiarise them with the procedure for operating through the NSP for availing the scholarship.

The scholarship amount of Rs 12000 per annum is disbursed as a Direct Benefit Transfer using the Aadhaar Payment Bridge into the bank account of the students or their parents, provided the bank account is linked with the Aadhaar Number and seeded, the release said.

A total of 210 participants attended the workshop from the Meerut Mandal, marking a significant representation from across the Mandal. Among the other participants from DoSEL included Ms. Sreekala P Venugopal, Director, Ms. Hema Malini, Under Secretary, Mr. Ram Singh, Deputy Director, Prof. Bharti Kaushik, CIET, NCERT and other team members.

Apart from NMMSS, the Department also gave Orientation to the participants on community mobilisation and CSR participation for strengthening school infrastructure and improving learning outcomes through Vidyanjali-The school Volunteer initiative, on the conduct of the School Challenge initiative on boarded on the MyGov portal to raise awareness about the ill effects of Tobacco consumption and on the Universal Design of Learning (UDL) textbooks being developed by NCERT.

- ANI