How the Social Justice Ministry’s retrospective rules jeopardise PhD fellowships of Scheduled Caste students

“I cleared the NET after two failed attempts. When my name finally appeared in the NFSC list, it felt like justice after years of struggle. But my application was rejected because my university’s NAAC certificate was renewed two months after I enrolled. How is this my fault?” 

— a Scheduled Caste research scholar from Punjab

THIS IS NOT AN ISOLATED GRIEVANCE. It mirrors the anxieties of hundreds of Dalit scholars caught in a bureaucratic web that denies them what they have already earned. As Savitribai Phule once wrote, “Awake, arise, and educate, smash traditions — liberate.” Yet, even after clearing the National Eligibility Test (‘NET’), Scheduled Caste students are being denied the very fellowship designed to liberate them through education.

In an earlier article for The Leaflet, I argued that the National Fellowship for Scheduled Castes (NFSC), envisioned as a corrective measure for Bahujan scholars, had been “warped in bureaucratic casteism.” Recent data obtained through RTI confirms this: out of 805 candidates selected in the June 2024 NFSC cycle, only 109 applications have been approved so far. The majority remain pending or rejected — many on the technical ground that their university’s NAAC accreditation was invalid at the time of admission.

What should have been a historic opportunity has turned into systemic denial against lakhs of Scheduled Caste students in India’s universities.

A new Memorandum and its retrospective trap

The Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, through its Office Memorandum dated November 29, 2024 (K-11022/5/2024-SCD-V-(NOS), has made NFSC eligibility conditional upon whether a candidate’s university had valid NAAC accreditation at the time of their admission.

This is a radical departure from earlier norms, which only required that:

• The institution held NAAC accreditation at the time of fellowship application, or

• The institution was government-funded and empowered to award degrees.

The timing of this shift is devastating. The results for UGC-NET, conducted in June were declared on October 17, 2024, leading many students to enrol promptly. Many of them have taken admission in the year 2023 itself . Yet, many universities restored their NAAC accreditation later . Students who acted in good faith, joining reputable universities, are now punished for lapses beyond their control.