By Ankit Raj
New Delhi: PhD researchers who are beneficiaries of the Maulana Azad National Fellowship are once again experiencing delays in the disbursement of their stipends. The majority of these researchers have not received their stipends from December 2024 up to the present date in May 2025. In fact, some researchers have not received their stipends even prior to this period.
The Maulana Azad National Fellowship, administered by the Ministry of Minority Affairs, offers financial assistance to researchers belonging to six notified minority communities in India: Muslim, Christian, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, and Parsi. However, the delays in disbursement have caused not only financial hardships but also psychological stress for the researchers dependent on this scholarship.
A number of students are managing to get by through borrowing funds. Research endeavours have come to a standstill. There are no funds left for purchasing books and conducting fieldwork.
Due to the government’s silence, the researchers feel that this fellowship is being intentionally halted. Several researchers have reported that ministry officials have advised them to abandon this fellowship and seek alternative schemes.
In light of this situation, three Members of Parliament (Zia ur Rahman from Sambhal, Mohammad Javed from Kishanganj, and T. Sumati from Chennai South) have written a letter addressed to the Union minister of minority affairs, Kiren Rijiju, requesting prompt attention to the matter.
The initial two years of this five-year scholarship are referred to as JRF (Junior Research Fellowship), during which a monthly stipend of Rs 37,000 is provided. The subsequent three years are designated as SRF (Senior Research Fellowship), offering a monthly amount of Rs 42,000. As of December 2023, a total of 1,466 researchers were benefiting from this fellowship. Among them, 907 were recipients of the JRF, while 559 were recipients of the SRF.
The government terminated this fellowship during the 2022-23 period.
In the budget for 2025-26, the central government decreased the funding for this fellowship by 4.9%, reducing it from Rs 45.08 crore to Rs 42.84 crore.
This story was originally published in thewire.in. Read the full story here.
