Prime Minister Research Fellowship Receives Only 1,890 Applications
- Prime Minister Research Fellowship promises to offer great opportunities to applicants with attractive stipend and other benefits.
- PMRF selection process is underway. Interviews will be conducted in the second week of May 2018.
Ministry of Human Resource Development i.e. HRD has revealed that many have applied for the Prime Minister Research Fellowship, popularly referred to as PMRF scheme yet. As of now, the Ministry has only received 1,890 applications for the 1,000 Prime Minister fellowships on offer.
The scheme was launched by the government to attract interested and talented candidates towards the doctoral and research programmes offered by Indian Institute of Technology (IITs) and Indian Institute of Science (IISc) to carry out research in the relevant fields.
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R Subrahmanyam, Higher Education Secretary said that the poor turnover is because both students and faculty do not have sufficient time to apply for the programme. Most of them are already overburdened with other research work and finding time for another fellowship is another challenge for them. PMRF is a time-bound research programme due to which not many are opting for it.
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The PMRF programme will offer selected candidates with an admission into the Ph.D. programme at one of the IIT Colleges in India or the popular IISc. They will be offered a fellowship of Rs. 70,000 per month for first two years followed by Rs. 75,000 per month for the third year and Rs. 80,000 per month in the fourth and fifth year. Scholars will also be offered Rs. 2 lakh per year to cover the academic/ travel expenses in addition.
HRD Ministry would be conducting interviews for the final selection at the nodal institutions after 14th May 2018 and the final result will most likely be announced in the last week of June.