Department of Social Justice & Empowerment has been implementing National Overseas scholarship Scheme for SC etc. students (NOS).

Department of Social Justice and Empowerment reviews the NOS scheme guidelines from time to time and makes changes for simplifying the procedures and to make the process more transparent. Since there is greater demand for study in science and technology fields, in order to better utilise the resources, scholarships can be prioritized for those subjects in greater demand. The fields of study where India has strength or where the field work is to be done in India can be left out of the list. Accordingly, topics/courses concerning Indian Culture, Heritage, History& Social studies on India will not be considered for award of scholarships from 2022-23 onwards, whereas other Humanities/Social Sciences which need international exposure such as Law, Economics, Psychology etc. are still available for funding. This change has provided more opportunities for the poor SC students to study in global best universities.

Thus, there is no New National Overseas Scholarship Policy and the existing National Overseas Scholarship scheme for SCs etc. will continue to be implemented by this Department with guidelines as revised recently.

NOS scheme guidelines of the DoSJE, "30% of the awards for each year shall be earmarked for women candidates". No change has been made to this clause of the scheme guidelines and therefore, the changes are unlikely to affect selection of female applicants.

The tenure of the members of National Monitoring Committee (NMC), except the ex-officio nominees was three years w.e.f 21.06.2012 and expired on 20.06.2015 and the meeting of next NMC which was re-constituted on 17.07.2018 could not be held. Hence, the ATR on the recommendations of the Task Force could not be placed before the reconstituted NMC.

This information was given by Minister of State for Social Justice and Empowerment Shri A. Narayanswamy in a written reply in Rajya Sabha today.

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MG/RNM/DP/RK