New Delhi: In a bid to reduce the financial burden on students doing research work, the University Grants Commission (UGC) has decided to disburse stipends to research scholars on monthly basis instead of the existing quarterly payout scheme.
UGC releasing a notification Saturday said that earlier research fellowships were disbursed on a quarterly basis but considering the financial needs of research scholars, the system of monthly payment was introduced.
In order to avoid delay in payments to the beneficiaries and disburse fellowships in a transparent manner, the payments are being released through Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) mode i.e directly to the bank accounts of research scholars.
Public Notice regarding Disbursal of UGC Research Fellowships. @DrRPNishank @SanjayDhotreMP @EduMinOfIndia @PIB_India @DDNewslive pic.twitter.com/M9KxcykoKb
— UGC INDIA (@ugc_india) December 5, 2020
The notification also reads, “Keeping in view the COVID-19 pandemic, it was decided to generate the monthly payments even for those research scholars whose monthly confirmation of data could not be uploaded by their institutions on the Canara Bank Portal. Hence, since April 2020, payments are being generated without insisting on the requirements of monthly confirmations from institutions, for all eligible research scholars, whose monthly confirmation was received on portal during any or all months of January, February and March, 2020 i.e. before lockdown period. Besides, the payment is also released for those beneficiaries who are able to mark their monthly confirmation on the Portal”.
The UGC has already released the pending fellowship amount of October 2020, while it will shortly release the pending scholarship amount of November month for the research scholars.
Efforts are also being made to further simplify the online process for timely disbursal of fellowships, added the notification.
PNN