National Supercomputing Mission: Why Access Requests Get Rejected and How to Fix It

National Supercomputing Mission: Why Access Requests Get Rejected and How to Fix It

Most National Supercomputing Mission (NSM) access requests stall for one of five reasons: a personal email used at registration, pending Head-of-Department or Principal-Investigator verification, documents submitted with errors that can no longer be edited, a weak resource justification, or a host-institute policy mismatch. NSM does not issue formal "rejection codes"; a request simply does not progress, so the fix is to find where it is stuck. The parent NSM scheme guide covers who can apply; this article is only about unblocking a stalled request.

Reason 1, You used a personal email address

The NSM user creation portal accepts only an official institutional email. A Gmail, Yahoo or other personal address fails at step one, registration cannot proceed at all. Fix: re-register using your institute-issued address (the one ending in your college, university or laboratory domain). If your institute has not given you one, ask your department office or IT cell to create it before you try again; there is no workaround inside the portal.

Reason 2 to HoD or PI verification is pending

After you complete the user creation form, the record moves to your Head of Department or Principal Investigator for confirmation before credentials are issued. Requests sit here longer than anywhere else in the process, and a "pending" state is frequently mistaken for a rejection. Fix: contact your HoD or PI directly, confirm they received the verification request, and ask them to action it. Verification is a manual human step. It does not clear itself. If your supervisor has left or changed, arrange for a current faculty member to endorse you.

Reason 3 to Documents submitted with errors

The access page warns that once documents are submitted, no further edits can be made because the record enters verification. A wrong file, an illegible scan or a mismatched name therefore cannot be corrected in place. Fix: check every field and every upload; identity proof, the signed user creation form, the project description, before you submit. If a request has already frozen with a bad document, write to the support desk (below) and ask whether the record can be reset rather than starting a fresh registration on the same email.

Reason 4 to Weak resource justification

Allocation on PARAM systems is not automatic even for eligible users. The access page states that allocation decisions "are made by C-DAC and the Host Institute per their policies," and capacity is finite and prioritised by scientific merit and need. A vague, one-line project description competes poorly. Fix: rewrite the project or research description to state the specific problem, the workload type (for example CFD, molecular dynamics, genomics or AI training), and your expected scale in core-hours or nodes. A concrete request is far more likely to be allocated than "need HPC for research."

Reason 5 to Host-institute policy mismatch

Each host institute applies its own allocation policy alongside C-DAC's, and priority typically goes to users affiliated with that institute. A request routed to a system whose host prioritises its internal users may be deprioritised even when you are otherwise eligible. Fix: confirm with your own institute whether it is a recognised host or user institute under the mission, and target the PARAM system your institute is entitled to. If your institute is not a participating host or user institute, that is the root blocker; raise it with your department.

How to escalate a stuck NSM request

1. Note where in the flow your request is: registration, email verification, document upload, HoD/PI verification, or allocation.
2. Write to the NSM support desk at nsmsupport@cdac.in, the address published on the access page, quoting your registered institutional email and the stage you are stuck at.
3. For mission-level queries, the DST NSM office lists phone 011-26590452.

What NSM will not do

NSM does not charge a fee to academic and research users, so any request for payment to "speed up" access is not part of the process. NSM also cannot bypass your institute: the HoD/PI endorsement and the host-institute allocation policy are structural, not optional, and no support ticket removes them. Fixing the specific blocker, email, verification, documents, justification or affiliation: is the only route through.