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The Union government has hiked its popular research scholarship the Junior Research Fellowship to a person, a roughly over 20% increase from the existing 25,000.
For months, research scholars across the country had organised protests and staged dharnas demanding that the scholarships be hiked as the stipends had not been revised since 2014.
A Wednesday communiqué from the Union Department of Science and Technology, which was coordinating the exercise, said the Senior Research Fellowships (SRF), which are given to research students two years into their doctoral studies, had been hiked to 35,000 a month. Stipends for the Research Assistants (who are pursuing postdoctoral studies and have at least three years of research experience) would range from 47,000 to 54,000 a month.
Revision made once in four years
The scholarships, which are a lifeline for thousands of students pursuing research in the physical sciences, are awarded after students appear for competitive examinations and are generally revised upwards once in four years.
The scholarship fees were last revised in 2014. About 1.25 lakh research scholars are beneficiaries of the fellowships and in percentage terms, this is the lowest increase in fellowships since 2010.