Deepening the Act East connection, fulfilling promises; Indian offers 1000 PhD Fellowships to ASEAN students

New Delhi, September 16: Known to be man of his words, Prime Minister Narendra Modi back in January 2018 during the 25th Anniversary ASEAN-India Commemorative Summit had announced to offer of upto 1000 integrated PhD Fellowships for ASEAN students in the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs). Implementing the same, External Affairs Minister Dr. S. Jaishankar and Minister of Human Resource Development Dr. Ramesh Pokhriyal 'Nishank', formally launched the Fellowship Programme at a ceremony at the Ministry of External Affairs on Monday.

The Launching ceremony was attended by senior officials of the MEA and MHRD along with the Ambassadors and High Commissioners of all ten ASEAN Member States. Apart from them, Directors/Representatives of all 23 IITs, CEO of NITI Aayog and Chairpersons of the University Grants Commission (UGC) and All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) also attended the launch.

Designation as an esteemed institute, the IIT Delhi has been assigned by MHRD as the coordinating IIT for the fellowship programme. It has developed a web portal (http://asean.iitd.ac.in) to administer the application and admission process. ASEAN students can log in to the portal to apply for PhD programmes of their choice at various IITs.

The first batch of the ASEAN students will be admitted in January 2020. Admissions under the programme will be staggered over three academic years i.e. 2019-2020, 2020-2021 and 2021-2022. MHRD will provide scholarships to ASEAN students at par with Indian PhD scholars, along with a yearly research grant, as applicable. IITs will make a small provision to cover living expenses of selected students from their own budgetary resources.

The fellowship programme at a total budget outlay of INR 300 crore (approximately USD 45 million) is the single-largest capacity development initiative of India in its partnership with ASEAN.