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Portals5 min read

The government portals every Indian student is expected to track

The short answer

An Indian student is expected to find, register on and keep track of more than twenty separate government systems, each holding one piece of their record. The National Scholarship Portal at scholarships.gov.in takes scholarship applications. DigiLocker holds verified documents. APAAR is the national academic account and ABC the credit bank that sits behind it. SWAYAM and NPTEL carry free courses. The National Career Service lists government vacancies. UMANG aggregates services, Vidya Lakshmi handles education loans, PFMS tracks whether a payment has actually moved, and the UGC, AICTE, NTA, NIRF and AISHE each run their own. None of them talk to each other, none of them tell you about the others, and there is no single place that lists what you are eligible for across all of them.

Published 15 September 2026 · by the Student Sewa team

Key facts

  • More than twenty separate government portals hold part of a student record.
  • Scholarship applications are made on the National Scholarship Portal at scholarships.gov.in.
  • APAAR is the national academic account; the Academic Bank of Credits sits behind it.
  • PFMS is where you check whether a sanctioned payment has actually been disbursed.
  • No portal tells you about the others, and none of them share an eligibility check.

The ones that decide whether you get paid

  • National Scholarship Portal (scholarships.gov.in) — where central and most state scholarship applications are actually made. Everything else about scholarships is downstream of this.
  • PFMS — the Public Financial Management System. This is where you check whether a sanctioned amount has actually been disbursed, which is a different question from whether it was approved, and the two diverge more often than anyone admits.
  • Vidya Lakshmi — the education loan portal.

The ones that prove who you are

  • DigiLocker — government-issued documents, verifiable, in one place. The single most useful account on this list, because so many of the others will accept what it holds.
  • APAAR — the Automated Permanent Academic Account Registry. A national student identifier.
  • Academic Bank of Credits (ABC) — the credit ledger APAAR is attached to, which is what makes moving between institutions possible.
  • Jan Parichay — the single sign-on used across government portals.

The ones that teach and the ones that hire

  • SWAYAM and NPTEL — free courses, many of them credit-bearing.
  • National Career Service (NCS) — government vacancies and employment exchange services.
  • Skill India and NSDC — vocational training and certification.
  • e-Shram — the unregistered worker database, which matters to students working alongside study.

The ones that regulate everything else

  • UGC and AICTE — the regulators for universities and technical education respectively.
  • NTA — the National Testing Agency, which runs the major entrance examinations.
  • NIRF — the national institutional rankings.
  • AISHE — the All India Survey on Higher Education, the source of the enrolment figures everybody quotes.
  • Anti-Ragging (antiragging.in) — where a ragging complaint is formally lodged.
  • Tele-MANAS — the national mental health service. See every student helpline number.
  • UMANG and MyGov — aggregators over the top of many of the above.

If you only open three this month

  1. DigiLocker, because it unlocks the documents every other application will ask for.
  2. The National Scholarship Portal, because deadlines there are absolute and pass quietly.
  3. PFMS, if you have ever been told a scholarship was approved and never seen it arrive.

All twenty-two, with what each one is for, are on the Student Sewa home page. Student Sewa does not run any of them — they are government services, and they work whether or not anybody installs anything.

Questions people actually ask

Where do I apply for a government scholarship in India?
On the National Scholarship Portal at scholarships.gov.in, which takes central and most state scholarship applications. Some states additionally run their own portal.
What is APAAR?
APAAR is the Automated Permanent Academic Account Registry, a national academic identifier for students. The Academic Bank of Credits sits behind it and holds the credit record.
How do I check if my scholarship money has actually been paid?
On PFMS, the Public Financial Management System. Approval and disbursement are different events, and PFMS is where the second one is visible.
What is DigiLocker used for by students?
DigiLocker holds government-issued documents in verifiable form, and many other portals and applications accept what it holds, which makes it the most useful single account for a student to set up first.

Sources

Every link below was opened and read before anything on this page was written down. Student Sewa runs none of these services.

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