National Fellowship for OBC PhD Researchers Effectively on Pause, Students Left in the Lurch
Osama Rawal | 20 September 2025 | The Wire
For the past 15 months, thousands of scholars eligible for the National Fellowship for Other Backward Classes (NFOBC) have been left in limbo. These are students from OBC backgrounds who cleared the UGC-NET or CSIR-NET exams, but narrowly missed the cut-off for the Junior Research Fellowship (JRF). For them, the NFOBC was launched in 2014-15 as a parallel support system.
The fellowship places these students at par with JRF awardees, offering Rs 37,000 per month for Junior Research Fellows and Rs 42,000 for Senior Research Fellows (revised in January 2023), along with house rent allowance and biennial contingency grants. Yet the National Backward Classes Finance and Development Corporation (NBCFDC), the authority responsible for releasing selection lists, has not released lists for the last three consecutive cycles – June 2024, December 2024 and June 2025 – citing a lack of clearance from the Union Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment (MoSJE)…