AICTE Margdarshan Scheme

What is the AICTE Margdarshan Scheme?

The AICTE Margdarshan Scheme is a mentoring initiative of the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), under the Ministry of Education, that pairs strong technical institutions with weaker ones to help the latter reach National Board of Accreditation (NBA) standards. According to the AICTE Margdarshan guidelines (revised May 2022), the initiative is a "facilitative mechanism that aims to foster and augment the support ecosystem" in AICTE-approved institutes and to motivate well-performing institutions to help others attain accreditation.

Accreditation matters more than ever: the National Education Policy 2020 makes accreditation a central pillar for benchmarking quality in higher education. Many AICTE-approved colleges, however, lack the internal capacity to prepare for NBA. Margdarshan bridges that gap by funding an accredited Mentor Institute (MI) to guide a cluster of Mentee Beneficiary Institutes (MBIs).

According to the AICTE guidelines, the Council provides a token grant-in-aid of Rs 5 lakh per Mentee Beneficiary Institute, so a Mentor Institute mentoring the maximum of 10 mentees can be sanctioned up to Rs 50 lakh for approved mentoring activities.

Key features

• Institution-to-institution mentoring scheme run by AICTE.
• Rs 5 lakh token grant per mentee institute; up to Rs 50 lakh per Mentor Institute for 10 mentees.
• Goal is to get mentee colleges to NBA accreditation.
• A parallel track nominates senior academicians as individual "Margdarshaks".

Who is eligible for the AICTE Margdarshan Scheme?

Margdarshan has two roles, and neither is open to individual students or the general public.

A Mentor Institute (MI) can apply if:

• It is an AICTE-approved institution.
• For engineering: at least 50% or a minimum of three UG/PG programmes are NBA accredited, valid for at least six months beyond the application date.
• For non-engineering (pharmacy, architecture, management, etc.): it runs relevant NBA-accredited PG programmes valid at least six months beyond application.
• For diploma-only institutes: at least four diploma programmes run, with 50% or a minimum of two carrying valid NBA accreditation.

A Mentee Beneficiary Institute (MBI) is eligible if:

• It is an AICTE-approved institute seeking to improve towards NBA accreditation.
• It is not already being mentored by another Mentor Institute or Margdarshak.

Who cannot apply:

• Individual students, teachers or members of the public cannot apply, this is an institutional scheme.
• Institutes approved only by other regulators such as PCI or the Council of Architecture (and not by AICTE) are not eligible.
• Cross-domain mentoring is not allowed, for example an engineering institute cannot mentor a pharmacy college.

The individual Margdarshak (MD) track is a nomination, not an open application: a Margdarshak must generally hold a Ph.D. with 20 years of experience (at least five in academics), be at least a Professor (or Associate Professor at a CFTI), have supervised at least three Ph.D. scholars, and have served on NBA/NAAC visit teams.

What documents are required?

How to apply for the AICTE Margdarshan Scheme

1. Confirm eligibility, the institute must be AICTE-approved with the required number of NBA-accredited programmes valid at least six months beyond the application date.
2. Prepare the Application-cum-Detailed Project Report in the AICTE format, listing the proposed mentee institutes and planned mentoring activities.
3. Have the application signed by the head of the institution and attach the NBA accreditation proof and mandate form.
4. Submit the application online to AICTE through the Margdarshan/Margdarshak portal under aicte.gov.in when the call is open.
5. On selection, AICTE sanctions the grant — Rs 5 lakh per mentee, up to Rs 50 lakh, and the Mentor Institute begins mentoring towards NBA accreditation.

How much benefit does Margdarshan provide?

The scheme provides a token grant of Rs 5 lakh per Mentee Beneficiary Institute, up to a maximum of Rs 50 lakh for a Mentor Institute mentoring 10 institutes. Up to 4% of the grant may be used as honorarium for the mentor's coordinating staff. The guidelines stress that this is a token grant requiring austerity; existing infrastructure at both mentor and mentee should be used, and routine subject FDPs funded elsewhere cannot be charged to it.

Under the individual Margdarshak track, a nominated senior academician is reimbursed travel (AC 2-tier/chair car by train, or notified taxi rates) and an honorarium of Rs 5,000 per day of visit; local boarding and lodging are provided by the mentee institute rather than reimbursed by AICTE.

Help and contact

• AICTE: 011-2958 1050 to 1000
• Official website: aicte.gov.in (Margdarshan / Margdarshak section)
• AICTE, Nelson Mandela Marg, Vasant Kunj, New Delhi 110070

Margdarshan is best understood as a quality-improvement mechanism for colleges, not a personal benefit. Its success is measured by how many mentee institutes secure NBA accreditation, strengthening the wider technical-education ecosystem envisaged under NEP 2020.