Maulana Azad Fellowship for minority students not available anymore: Irani

The Maulana Azad Fellowship scheme is a five-year fellowship provided by the Centre in the form of financial assistance to six notified minority communities – Muslim, Buddhist, Christian, Jain, Parsi and Sikh — to pursue M Phils and PhDs.

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Minority Affairs Minister Smriti Irani. (File Photo)

Written by: Esha Roy

2 min readNew DelhiDec 10, 2022 07:50 AM IST First published on: Dec 10, 2022 at 02:13 AM IST

After restricting the pre-matric scholarship for minority students, the Ministry of Minority Affairs has also stopped Maulana Azad Fellowship — dedicated to pursuing higher education — to minority students, from 2022-23. Minority Affairs Minister Smriti Irani announced this in Lok Sabha on Thursday in response to a question by Congress member T N Prathapan.

“Since the MANF scheme overlaps with various other fellowship schemes for higher education being implemented by the government and minority students are already covered under such schemes, hence, the government has decided to discontinue the MANF scheme from 2022-23,’’ Irani told the Lok Sabha.

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In her reply, Irani added that as per the data provided by the UGC, 6,722 candidates were selected under the fellowship scheme between 2014-15 and 2021-22 with a cumulative disbursal of Rs 738.85 crore.