PM-YASASVI Scheme for Student Scholarships and Hostels

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The **Minister of State** recently reaffirmed the government commitment to expand educational opportunities for disadvantaged students under the **PM-YASASVI** scheme by highlighting scholarships and hostel support.

The **PM-YASASVI** scheme stands for **Prime Minister Young Achievers Scholarship Award Scheme for Vibrant India**. The **Department of Social Justice and Empowerment** under the **Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment** implements this umbrella scheme, which combines scholarship support and residential hostel facilities for socially and educationally backward youth across the country.

The hostel construction part of this initiative originally started in **1998-99** to reduce educational backwardness among OBC youth, and the government revised it significantly in **2017-18**.
The government later consolidated and expanded these efforts into the unified **PM-YASASVI** umbrella framework, which now delivers financial help across all learning stages from school through premier college education.
The main goal is to remove financial difficulties and geographical hurdles for students from rural and economically weaker backgrounds, ensuring equal access to secondary and higher education through scholarships and quality hostel accommodation.

This scheme covers students belonging to **Other Backward Classes (OBC)**, **Economically Backward Classes (EBC)**, and **Denotified, Nomadic, and Semi-Nomadic Tribes (DNT)** categories.
Applicants must feature in the Central, State, or Union Territory lists of **OBCs** and must strictly belong to the non-creamy layer.
Hostel admissions give priority to post-matric and college undergraduate students coming from rural areas without local colleges, while reserving **5%** of seats specifically for students with disabilities.

The scheme operates a four-tiered scholarship structure combining **Pre-Matric Scholarship Scheme**, **Post-Matric Scholarship Scheme**, **Top Class Education in Schools Scheme**, and **Top Class Education in Colleges Scheme**.
Construction costs for hostels are fixed per seat based on region, set at **₹3.50 lakh** per seat in the **North Eastern Region**, **₹3.25 lakh** per seat in **Himalayan Regions**, and **₹3.00 lakh** per seat in the **Rest of India**.
Authorities enforce strict construction timelines requiring hostels to be completed within **18 months** from the work order or **two years** from the first installment release without any project extensions.
To eliminate new land acquisition needs, construction is permitted within existing state government projects, engineering colleges, medical campuses, polytechnics, and **Saansad Adarsh Gram Yojana (SAGY)** villages.
Central funds are released in three stages using a **50:45:5 ratio**, where the final **5%** is disbursed only after confirming actual hostel occupancy by **OBC**, **EBC**, and **DNT** students.
The government allocates **0.25%** of the budget up to **₹10 lakh** for independent third-party quality inspections and impact evaluation studies.