National Awards for Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities: Divyangjano Ke Liye Sarvshrestha Placement Agency

What is the Divyangjano Ke Liye Sarvshrestha Placement Agency award?

The "Divyangjano Ke Liye Sarvshrestha Placement Agency" award is one of the National Awards for Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities, conferred by the Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities (DEPwD), Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment. According to DEPwD, these national awards have been given every year since 1969 to recognise the skills and contribution of persons with disabilities and of the individuals and institutions that empower them.

The National Awards are organised in two broad groups, National Awards for Individual Excellence and National Awards for Institutions Engaged in helping Persons with Disabilities. This particular award sits in the institutional group and recognises the best placement agency that helps persons with disabilities find employment, excluding Government, State Government and local body agencies.

The award is a recognition, not a grant; there is no cash benefit attached to this category. It is a mark of national standing for a placement agency that has done exceptional work.

Who is eligible for the Sarvshrestha Placement Agency award?

A nominee can be considered if:

• It is a placement agency for persons with disabilities, an organisation that registers unemployed persons with disabilities and places them in jobs.
• It is not a Government, State Government or local body agency; the category is reserved for private and non-government placement agencies.

Selection criteria and weightage. According to the scheme details, the best placement agency is chosen against parameters such as:

• Placing at least 50% of registered unemployed persons with disabilities over the last five years, with at least 30% of them women (20% weight).
• Total number of persons with disabilities placed over five years (10% weight).
• Follow-up of placed candidates over five years (25% weight).
• A drop-out rate of placed employees not exceeding 20% in a year (15% weight).
• Balance across disability categories while assisting placement (10% weight).
• Any additional assessment parameter the Screening Committee devises (20% weight).

Who cannot apply:

• Individuals cannot apply for a personal benefit under this category. Persons with disabilities seeking individual recognition should look at the "Individual Excellence" categories, which are open to persons with a benchmark disability of 40% or more (with a valid disability certificate).
• Government, State Government and local body placement agencies are expressly excluded from this category.

What documents are required?

How to apply for the Sarvshrestha Placement Agency award

Applications are submitted online only, on the national awards portal at awards.gov.in, the common platform operated by the Ministry of Home Affairs. Applications sent directly to the Department in physical or soft-copy form are not considered.

1. Wait for the advertisement. DEPwD announces the opening of the National Awards Portal and the application window through newspaper advertisements and the Department's website. The last date for receipt of applications is 31 July.
2. Register on the portal. On awards.gov.in, click "Register" on the top right, fill the mandatory fields (using an Aadhaar number or another identity document, with a mobile number linked to it), accept the declaration, complete the captcha and submit. Login credentials arrive on the registered mobile number.
3. Log in and select the award. Sign in, choose "National Awards for Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities" from the list of awards, and click "Nominate / Apply Now".
4. Fill the application form in Hindi or English, entering all mandatory fields and the agency's placement record.
5. Upload the supporting documents — one consolidated PDF (up to 5 MB) in the supporting-documents section, which may contain multiple pages.
6. Preview and submit. The application can be reviewed before final submission; once finally submitted it cannot be edited. A confirmation with a Nomination ID is sent by SMS from NATAWD.

Both self-nomination and nomination by others are permitted, and no recommendation of any authority is required.

How is the award decided and presented?

All nominations received within the deadline go to Screening Committees constituted by the Department, which shortlist applications for the National Selection Committee. No award is conferred except on the recommendation of the National Selection Committee, and the approved names are published on the Department's portal (disabilityaffairs.gov.in) and communicated to the awardees.

The award ceremony is held at Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi, on 3 December. The International Day of Persons with Disabilities, and the awards are presented through the President or Vice President of India. The awardee receives a certificate and a shield. DEPwD bears the boarding and lodging of the awardee and one escort, and reimburses to-and-fro travel and accommodation for up to one day before and after the ceremony; the TA/DA admissibility is equivalent to a Class-I officer of the Central Government.

Help and where to apply

Nominations run entirely through awards.gov.in. For guidelines, the advertisement and FAQs, and for any helpdesk assistance, refer to the Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities website (depwd.gov.in) and the awards portal. A dedicated toll-free helpline for this award is not published; the portal helpdesk is the point of contact for technical issues.

How to check your application status

Once a nomination for the Sarvshrestha Placement Agency award is submitted on awards.gov.in, the agency can track it through the following channels.

1. SMS acknowledgement at submission. Immediately after final submission, a confirmation message from the sender ID NATAWD arrives on the mobile number registered on the portal, carrying a Nomination ID. Keep this ID safe: it is the reference number for every later status check and any correspondence with the Department.
2. Portal login and "My Applications". Log in to awards.gov.in with the same credentials used at registration and open the "My Applications" or "Track Application" section on the dashboard. The nomination shows one of a few broad states, such as submitted, under screening, forwarded to the National Selection Committee, or not selected. The portal does not typically give a running commentary on internal committee deliberations, only the stage the file has reached.
3. Screening Committee stage. After the 31 July deadline, nominations move to Screening Committees constituted by the Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities (DEPwD). This stage is internal; there is no separate applicant-facing tracker for it beyond the status shown on the portal.
4. National Selection Committee and final result. Shortlisted nominations go to the National Selection Committee. Once decisions are finalised, the list of awardees is published on the Department's portal (disabilityaffairs.gov.in) ahead of the ceremony, and successful agencies are separately intimated so they can make travel arrangements for the 3 December event at Vigyan Bhawan.
5. If the portal shows no update for a long time, the agency's first step should be to re-check the Nomination ID and registered mobile number are correct, since status lookups are tied to these. If the status genuinely appears stuck, the portal helpdesk (linked from awards.gov.in) and the DEPwD website (depwd.gov.in) are the points of contact, since no separate toll-free helpline is published for this specific award.
6. No physical or offline tracking exists. Since applications sent directly to the Department outside the portal are not considered at all, there is correspondingly no offline or in-person status-check process; everything runs through the awards.gov.in login.

Common reasons for rejection

Nominations for this award are turned down or dropped from consideration for reasons that are largely procedural rather than about the quality of an agency's placement work. The most frequent ones, and how to avoid them, are below.

• Nomination submitted outside the portal. Applications emailed, couriered or hand-delivered to DEPwD in physical or soft-copy form are not entertained, regardless of merit. The fix is straightforward: submit only through awards.gov.in, and treat any other channel as informational at best.
• Missed the 31 July deadline. The portal typically closes strictly on the notified last date, and late submissions are not accepted into that year's cycle. Agencies planning to nominate themselves, or to be nominated, should track the DEPwD advertisement each year and register on the portal well before the window closes rather than in the last few days, since registration itself (Aadhaar or alternate ID, plus a linked mobile number) can take a day or two if the mobile-linking step runs into delays.
• Agency falls outside the eligible category. Government, State Government or local body placement agencies are excluded from this award by definition. A nomination from such a body, or on its behalf, is rejected on eligibility grounds alone, independent of its placement record. Only private and non-government placement agencies should nominate under this specific category.
• Weak or unsubstantiated placement data. Since the selection weightage is heavily tied to hard numbers (the 50% placement rate over five years, the 30% women-placement share, follow-up records and the drop-out ceiling of 20%), a nomination that states these figures without supporting documentation is difficult for the Screening Committee to verify and is likely to be screened out in favour of nominations that back their claims with registration certificates, placement records and appreciation letters. Attach the "record of achievements" and "details of past awards" documents even though they are optional, since they are what substantiates the numeric claims.
• Incomplete or inconsistent proof-of-work documents. The mandatory documents (certificate of registration, proof of address, proof of nature of work) need to correspond to the same agency and period being described in the form. A registration certificate for a different entity name, or an address proof that does not match the agency's current address, invites a query or an outright rejection at the screening stage.
• Application filled in a language other than Hindi or English. The form must be completed in one of these two languages only; entries in a regional language are not processed as submitted.
• Documents not consolidated correctly. Supporting documents must be uploaded as a single consolidated PDF in the designated section. Scattered multi-file uploads, or files placed in the wrong section of the form, can mean the Screening Committee does not see the full evidence an agency intended to submit.
• Editing attempted after final submission. Once an application is finally submitted, it cannot be revised. An agency that discovers an error afterward, such as a wrong figure in the placement data, cannot correct it for that cycle; the file is evaluated as originally submitted. Using the preview step carefully before hitting final submit is the only safeguard.
• Duplicate or overlapping nominations. Where the same agency is nominated more than once in a cycle, whether by self-nomination and a third party, or under slightly different names or registration details, the Screening Committee may treat the entries as inconsistent rather than merging them in the agency's favour. Coordinating so that only one clean nomination goes in per cycle avoids this.
• Not selected on relative merit. Even a fully compliant, well-documented nomination can simply not be chosen in a given year if other nominated agencies show a stronger five-year placement record, better follow-up data or a lower drop-out rate, since only one agency receives the award. This is not a rejection for defect, and such agencies remain free to reapply in a subsequent year with an updated track record.