E-Paper
NMMS Scholarship 2023-24: Record over 1.67 lakh U.P. students in race
Meritorious students from economically weaker backgrounds in Uttar Pradesh are ready to show their calibre in larger numbers than ever before for National Means Cum-Merit Scholarship (NMMS) 2023-24 to be given by the union education ministry
Meritorious students from economically weaker backgrounds in Uttar Pradesh are ready to show their calibre in larger numbers than ever before for National Means Cum-Merit Scholarship (NMMS) 2023-24 to be given by the union education ministry.
“This time a record over 1.67 lakh applications have been received from across the state for the prestigious scholarship examination set to be held on November 13,” said Anil Bhushan Chaturvedi, secretary, Exam Regulatory Authority, U.P.—the body entrusted with the task of conducting the exam in Uttar Pradesh. “Preparations for the exam to be conducted in all districts are on schedule,” he added.
The NMMS scholarships, launched in 2008, are awarded to meritorious students from economically weaker sections to arrest their dropout rate after class 8. The scholarship amount is ₹12,000 per annum to enable students to study from class 9 to class 12.
“One lakh fresh scholarships are awarded in the country under the scheme to selected students of class 9 every year and their continuation/renewal in classes 10 to 12 for study in state government, government-aided and local body schools,” said Usha Chandra, director, Bureau of Psychology, U.P. and the state coordinator, NMMS exams-2022.
“Students whose parental income from all sources is not more than ₹3,50,000 per annum are eligible for the scholarship. The students must have minimum of 55 % marks or equivalent grade in class 8 examination (5% relaxation to SC/ST students) for appearing in selection test for award of scholarship,” she added.
“The students should be studying as regular student in a government, government-aided or a local body school. Students of Navodaya schools, Kendriya Vidyalayas and residential schools are not entitled to the scholarship,” she said. In the earlier years, the count of applicants in U.P. struggled to even reach 50,000-mark. The state has a quota of 15,143 students for getting the scholarship in a year.
However, in the last academic session (2022-23), only 6,456 meritorious students could get scholarships, less than half of the allotted seats of quota for each district on an average. As many as 38,837 students had applied for the last session’s examination held on April 24 by the office of the Examination Regulatory Authority and out of them only 27,352 had appeared in the examination.
This year for 2023-24 session, the state basic education department had launched a special campaign to ensure maximum applicants so as to utilise the entire quota of 15,143 scholarships fixed for U.P. Director general, school education, Vijay Kiran Anand himself was monitoring it and as a result 1,67,545 children have filled the forms this time.
This time maximum 6,347 applicants are from Jaunpur besides 5,265 from Sitapur, 2,408 from Lucknow, 2,596 from Prayagraj, 4,511 from Varanasi and 2,304 from Meerut among others.
The quota of NMMS scholarship is fixed for different districts of the state. Maximum 494 seats are earmarked for the students of Prayagraj besides 459 for Azamgarh, 338 for Bijnor, 307 for Gorakhpur, 333 for Kanpur Nagar, 318 for Lakhimpur Kheri, 319 for Pratapgarh and 359 seats for Sitapur.
