Rajasthan Indira Priyadarshini Puraskar Yojana

What was the Rajasthan Indira Priyadarshini Puraskar Yojana?

Rajasthan Indira Priyadarshini Puraskar Yojana, often written in Hindi as Indira Priyadarshini Puraskar Yojana, was a girl-student merit award of the School Education Department, administered through the Directorate of Secondary Education at Bikaner. The award went to girl students who stood first in their district in the Class 8, Class 10 or Class 12 examination of the state board.

The scheme has since been discontinued, with its purpose folded into the consolidated Padmakshi Puraskar Yojana. That matters more than any historical detail: a girl student searching for this award today will not find an open application window under this name, and should look at Padmakshi Puraskar instead. This page keeps the record of what the scheme was, because families and schools still refer to it and because old award letters, bank credits and school notices carry the name.

Why the state ran it. Rajasthan has long had a gap between boys' and girls' retention after Class 8 and again after Class 10. Cash awards pegged to continuing in the next class are a direct answer to that: the money is not paid simply for the result, it is paid for the result plus enrolment in the next class. The Class 12 award added a scooter for the same reason, distance to a college is one of the practical reasons girls stop studying in rural Rajasthan.

How much did the Indira Priyadarshini Puraskar pay?

The award was a one-time payment, credited directly to the girl student's own bank account through Direct Benefit Transfer. It was not a recurring scholarship, and it did not stack across years. A girl who won at Class 10 could win again at Class 12 only by topping her district again in that class.

The award was distributed across social categories, General, SC, ST, OBC, Minority, Special Backward Class, students with disabilities, and BPL; rather than being a single unreserved list, so that the top-performing girl in each category within a district was recognised.

Who was eligible, and who was not eligible?

A girl student qualified if:

• She was a permanent resident of Rajasthan.
• She was studying in a school affiliated to the Board of Secondary Education, Rajasthan, Ajmer, in Class 8, Class 10 or Class 12.
• She stood first in her district in that class in her category.
• She scored at least the minimum qualifying marks prescribed for the award, reported as 60% in the scheme's published criteria.
• She took admission in the next class as a regular student. Continuing in education was the condition on which the money was actually released.

A student was not eligible if:

• The student was male. The award was exclusively for girls.
• She was not a permanent resident of Rajasthan, even if studying in the state.
• She studied under a board other than the Rajasthan board, since the merit list was drawn from state board results.
• She was a private or non-regular candidate, rather than a regular enrolled student of a school.
• She discontinued her studies after the qualifying examination and did not enrol in the next class.

What documents were required?

How was the Indira Priyadarshini Puraskar applied for?

The scheme had no student-filed application form, and this is the detail most people get wrong. The selection ran school-upwards, not student-upwards.

1. The school identified the girls who topped their district in the qualifying class from the published board results, and compiled a list with the students' bank and Jan Aadhaar details.
2. The school forwarded that list to the Directorate of Secondary Education, Bikaner, through the departmental reporting channel.
3. District Education Officers verified the selections on the Shala Darpan portal, checking the marks, the district rank, the category and the fact of admission in the next class.
4. On approval, the award amount was credited directly to the student's bank account, and Class 12 awardees were additionally given a scooter through the district administration.

A student who believed she qualified but was left out raised it through her school principal, who took it to the District Education Officer. Individual representations sent directly to Bikaner without the school's endorsement were not entertained.

Why an award was missed or delayed

• Bank account not in the student's own name, or not linked to her Jan Aadhaar, so the DBT credit failed.
• Name mismatch between the board marksheet, the bank account and Jan Aadhaar.
• No admission in the next class, which made the award lapse even where the result qualified.
• School did not submit the name to the Directorate in time.
• Category certificate not on file, so the student was assessed only against the general list.
• District rank contested where two students shared marks, pending verification by the District Education Officer.

What replaced it, and what should students look at now?

Rajasthan Indira Priyadarshini Puraskar Yojana has been superseded by the Padmakshi Puraskar Yojana, the School Education Department's consolidated award for meritorious girl students. Students and parents looking for a live scheme should start there.

Alongside it, the same department continues to run:

• Gargi Puraskar, for girls scoring 75% or more in the Class 10 or Class 12 state board examination who continue their studies. Gargi reaches tens of thousands of girls a year, unlike the district-topper design of Indira Priyadarshini.
• Balika Protsahan Puraskar. A one-time award for high-scoring girls in the board examinations.
• Kalibai Bheel Medhavi Chhatra Scooty Scheme, which distributes scooters to meritorious girl students continuing to higher education, and which now carries the two-wheeler component that the Class 12 Indira Priyadarshini award once included.

All of these are validated through Shala Darpan and paid against the student's Jan Aadhaar-seeded bank account, so keeping those two records accurate is the practical step that matters most.

Help and grievance redressal

• Directorate of Secondary Education, Bikaner. The office that administered the award
• School Education Department helpline: 0141-2700872
• Your school principal and District Education Officer, the correct first and second stop for any dispute about selection or a missed payment
• Jan Aadhaar helpline: 181, for correcting the bank account or family record that a DBT credit depends on

No fee was ever charged for this award, and no agent could add a name to the list. Because the scheme is closed, treat any offer to "get you the Indira Priyadarshini Puraskar" as a fraud and report it on the state anti-corruption helpline 1064.