Govt approves Rs 80,000/month PhD grant

The Union Cabinet has approved the PM Research Fellowships (PMRF) in a bid to stop the students from India to take up scholarships for frontier research abroad.

The PMRF will provide paid scholarships for students of higher education institutions like the IITs, IISERs and NITs.

Engineering graduates from IITs, IISERs, IIITs or NITs shortlisted for the PMRF are eligible to directly pursue PhD at IITs or IISc, Bengaluru.

Including monthly scholarships of Rs 70,000 to Rs 80,000 and annual research grants of Rs 2 lakh for the chosen scholars, the PMRF has been approved with an allocation of Rs 1,650 crore to be spent over three years.

The government is allowing 1,000 annual scholarships under the scheme and is also planning to upgrade research facilities at the IITs and IISc. 

Speaking in this regard, Union human resource development minister Prakash Javadekar stated that the BTech graduates or graduates from integrated-MTech or MSc in science and technology streams will be offered direct admission in PhD programme at the IITs/ IISc with the scheme.