The University Grants Commission (UGC) will disburse the pending emoluments to Junior Research Fellows (JRF) and Senior Research Fellows (SRF) within a week, according to officials. According to UGC Secretary Rajnish Jain, the disbursal was delayed due to some technical issues.
"The technical issues which had delayed the disbursal have been resolved and along with the existing emoluments, the backlog would also be cleared and the fellowships would be deposited in the respective accounts within this week," he said.
The JRF scheme of the UGC is for candidates who qualify in the National Eligibility Testing (NET) and the UGC-Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) joint test and the tenure of fellowship is initially for two years. While a JRF scholar gets Rs 31,000 per month, an SRF scholar gets Rs 28,000. In the June 2019 UGC-NET exam, 51,000 candidates qualified for assistant professors, while 4,756 of them qualified for JRF.
Various monthly scholarships have been blocked or not disbursed properly for several months in different Indian universities, according to a group of research scholars from across the country. They have complained about delay in payment of scholarships, issues pertaining to online-offline application process, problems in upgrading Junior Research Fellowships to Senior Research Fellowship, cold response from officials in delivery of fellowships etc. as the educational institutions have been closed since mid-March due to the COVID-19 crisis.
