PhD fellowships in India

What are the main PhD fellowships in India?

If a full-time PhD scholar in India has a fellowship, mostly it is one of the five given below. Other scholars are funded by their own university or institute.

In several of these schemes you get house rent allowance (HRA) in addition to the monthly amount. The HRA rate depends on your city, and the hostel rules also apply. The HRA money comes from your institution, and the accounts people or the research section there can tell you how it is worked out for you. Our fellowship stipend calculator gives the monthly, yearly and full tenure totals with HRA and contingency added.

How does the UGC or CSIR NET JRF fellowship work?

When scholars say “fellowship”, mostly they mean the Junior Research Fellowship. To get it you have to qualify in the JRF category of UGC-NET or the joint CSIR-UGC NET, and both of these exams are held by the National Testing Agency. JRF goes only to the top scorers in each subject and category. The rest qualify for assistant professorship or for PhD admission only. How NET results are now used for admission is in our PhD admission guide.

After you get the JRF award and register for a PhD, the steps are like this.

1. Joining. You join the fellowship through your university or institute. This has to happen within the validity period written on your award letter. The university or institute then informs UGC or CSIR that you have joined.
2. Payment. UGC and CSIR both pay the monthly amount by Direct Benefit Transfer straight into your bank account. The contingency grant comes through your institution.
3. Upgrade to SRF. At the two-year mark a committee looks at your work. For CSIR it is a three-member expert committee. When the progress is found good enough, you become an SRF. If it is not, CSIR’s rules allow you to stay as JRF for a third year and face the assessment again.
4. Tenure. Five years in total at most, or till you submit the thesis, whichever comes first.

The complaint scholars raise most is about delayed payment. Usually some paperwork is the reason. A joining report may be missing, a progress report may not be signed, or the bank account is not seeded with Aadhaar. Keep a copy of every paper you submit, and check bank account every month.

Who can apply for PMRF and the INSPIRE Fellowship?

Prime Minister’s Research Fellowship

Among the national doctoral fellowships, PMRF pays the highest amount. It is meant for PhD scholars in science and engineering at the participating institutions. These are all the IITs and IISERs, IISc Bangalore, and some selected central universities and NITs. You can come in by two routes. Direct entry is for those who apply while they are still in first semester of a regular PhD programme. Lateral entry is for scholars who are already in the first two years of a PhD at a participating institution. The selection is quite tough, and after getting in also the fellows have to present their work in a yearly review.

We checked pmrf.in in September 2026. At that time the site said the ministry’s sanctioned seats were all filled, and further approval for admissions was awaited. Before you make any plan around PMRF, see the site for the latest position.

DST INSPIRE Fellowship

INSPIRE Fellowship is run by the Department of Science and Technology. Every year it takes about 1,000 new PhD scholars in the sciences, medicine, agriculture, pharmacy and veterinary sciences. To be eligible you should have got first rank in your university in the qualifying master’s degree, with 70% marks or more. INSPIRE-SHE scholars with at least 70% in their M.Sc. can also apply. You can apply only when there is a call on online-inspire.gov.in, and the offer must be taken up at a recognised institution. The present monthly amount is not given on the DST scheme page. Older figures are there all over internet, so go by the current call on the INSPIRE portal for the rate.

What fellowships are there for social sciences and other fields?

ICSSR doctoral fellowships

The Indian Council of Social Science Research gives full-term doctoral fellowships for two years. As per icssr.org, the present amount is ₹20,000 a month and ₹20,000 a year as contingency. ICSSR also has short-term fellowships for scholars who are near submission, and a separate scheme for contingency grants. To apply, you must be registered as a full-time PhD scholar in social sciences. You should be studying at a UGC-recognised university, a deemed university, an institute of national importance, an ICSSR institute or a recognised college. ICSSR gives the call once in a year. Mostly it has its own deadlines, and the number of awards in each discipline is limited.

Other national and state schemes

• Agency fellowships are given by ICMR, DBT, ICAR and other science agencies. Each one has its own selection test or route, so look at that agency’s site for the scheme running now.
• Fellowships for SC, ST, OBC, minority and single-girl-child candidates are run by UGC or by the ministry concerned. In recent years the eligibility and selection rules have been changed many times. Read the latest notice on ugc.gov.in or on the ministry’s site.
• State government fellowships are mostly for scholars who are domiciled in that state and registered at its state universities. Each state’s own schemes, with eligibility and the way to apply, are in our guides for Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Maharashtra and West Bengal.
• Institutional fellowships are offered by IITs, NITs, IISERs, central universities and many private universities. Usually they go to full-time scholars who got admission through GATE, NET or the institute’s own test. The fellowship comes along with the admission itself, so go through the admission notice carefully.
• Project JRF and SRF posts are paid out of a faculty member’s research grant. They are separate from the national fellowships. How a faculty member applies for that kind of grant is covered in our research grant proposal guide.

What should you check before accepting a fellowship?

• Read the current call or scheme guidelines on the official site itself. Coaching and news sites keep old amounts, age limits and eligibility rules for years after they are changed.
• Check whether the fellowship is tenable at your university. You can take a UGC or CSIR fellowship to most recognised universities and institutes. PMRF is held at participating institutions only. Some state fellowships also work only inside that state.
• Check the joining deadline on your award letter. A JRF award is valid only for some period and you have to join inside that period, which you will find written in the letter or the e-certificate itself.
• Understand the full-time condition. Almost every fellowship asks for full-time registration, and paid work outside is restricted.
• Know that you cannot hold two fellowships at once. Take CSIR’s rules as one example. Time you spent on a UGC, DST, DBT, ICMR or ICAR fellowship is counted in the same five-year limit.
• Your RAC reports also matter here. After two years your progress is reviewed, and the JRF to SRF upgrade depends on that review.

Plenty of scholars do their PhD without any fellowship. If you also did not get one, don’t think your research is weak because of that. A lot of them, especially part-time scholars, pay for the PhD from their job salary. If you are part-time and planning the full degree, our PhD timeline guide will be useful. For institutional fellowships and ICSSR, the committee reads your proposal along with your academic record. So a clear and well-argued research proposal helps there.