The Odisha State Scholarship Portal (www.odishascholarships.gov.in) will be developed as a single digital platform for all scholarship schemes and maintained by Odisha Computer Application Centre. The portal will process applications for disbursement of scholarship to students in the 2019-20 academic year only for one scheme. It will initially start processing online applications of the pre-matric scholarship of SC/ST Development department 'Prerana' in the current academic session.

The common scholarship portal, developed by the Electronics and IT department, will be launched in January 2020 for the benefit of meritorious students who often fail to apply due to ignorance.

The Board of Secondary Education (BSE) data set and the school master data set of Odisha Primary Education Programme Authority will be integrated for online processing of 'Prerana' applications through the portal, an official of the department said.

The scholarship applications of other departments will be processed from April 2020 for the 2020-21 academic session. In the first phase, 20 scholarship schemes of seven departments will be processed and disbursed through the portal, he added.

The portal will be integrated with iFMS of Finance department to make it an end-to-end scholarship disbursement platform. The Government has also asked all departments concerned to modify their internal process of scholarship distribution and remove field agencies for direct release of fund to the beneficiaries.

Besides, online Aadhaar authentication of applicants/beneficiaries will be done for which the Government has asked departments to ensure each scholarship scheme is notified under the provision of Section 7 of the Aadhaar Act, 2016.

Sources said the Krushak Assistance for Livelihood and Income Augmentation (KALIA) scholarship scheme, launched by the Government in February this year for benefit of meritorious students from families of farmers, will also be integrated with the portal.