Schools and intermediate colleges located in the Tribal Sub-Plan area, Jharkhand, may be deprived of grant benefits for the financial year 2025-26, following major changes made to the government’s new online grant portal, members of the Vittarahit Shikshak Sangharsh Morcha (Unaided Teachers’ Struggle Front) have warned.

According to the Morcha, the absence of Categories A, B and C in the current grant application form violates the Grant Regulations, 2015, under which separate slabs exist for general institutions, rural institutions, tribal area institutions, and girls’ schools and colleges. As a result, many institutions in tribal regions and girls’ educational institutions are unlikely to receive their entitled grants.

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The department has made online submission mandatory for 2025-26 after developing a new grant portal. However, institutions are facing severe technical difficulties.

The form now requires U-DISE codes and e-Vidyavahini passwords, many of which no longer match the data available on the department’s portal. In several cases, passwords were altered by education officials or by school heads themselves, leading to mismatches that prevent access to the portal.

Additionally, the portal is plagued by server failures, power outages in rural areas, heavy network load, and slow-loading pages, making it difficult for institutions to complete data entry. More than 50 schools and intermediate colleges have already submitted written complaints to the Director of Secondary Education.

Previously, Category A covered general institutions, Category B rural institutions, and Category C included girls’ schools, girls’ intermediate colleges and institutions in tribal areas. The removal of these categories means schools in Gumla, Lohardaga, Simdega, Khunti, Chatra, Santhal Pargana districts, West Singhbhum, Seraikela-Kharsawan, Mandar, Tamar and Bundu will lose their entitled benefits.

The Morcha leaders, including Fazlul Qadir Ahmed, Arvind Singh, Harihar Prasad Kushwaha, Manoj Tirkey and Vinay Oraon, have urged the department to relax the mandatory requirement of U-DISE and e-Vidyavahini credentials and restore the previous slab system.

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They have also demanded that the deadline for submitting the online grant form, currently set for January 5, 2026, be extended to January 15, 2026, warning that many institutions will otherwise be unable to complete the process.

The Morcha announced it will submit a memorandum on December 29 to the Education Secretary and the Director of Secondary Education, seeking urgent corrective action.