IGNOU MAEC Handwritten Assignment — All 23 MEC, MECE and Borrowed Codes, the SOSS Cut-Offs and the AST Code Format

Inside the Envelope When It Reaches You

Four physical things arrive, and it is worth knowing what each is for before you order. The first is the answer set itself: your MEC or MECE questions answered longhand on A4, one code per stapled set, never two courses combined into a single document because the IGNOU booklet asks for them separately. The second is the IGNOU-format assignment cover sheet, the front page in the phrase most learners use, and it arrives blank in the fields only you can fill: enrolment number, name, address, study-centre code and your signature. The third is a printed copy of the official question paper for each code, taken from the booklet your session is registered against, so that an evaluator can see the questions the answers respond to. The fourth is the packaging, and it is paid for already.

What does not arrive is a file. No soft copy or PDF is sold. If what you actually want is a reference document to read and rewrite from, that is a different product and it is linked further down this page rather than sold here.

The reason the cover sheet arrives blank in those fields is not laziness. You sign the declaration on the assignment cover page, so you should read and review the content before submitting it, and satisfy yourself that it represents your own understanding of the course. A pre-signed sheet would defeat that, and a wrongly filled enrolment number is the single most common reason a submitted assignment fails to appear against a learner’s record.

Where the ₹320 Stops, and What It Never Includes

One figure covers one course code. That is the whole pricing model, and it has no tiers, no per-page component and no surcharge by subject difficulty — a Quantitative Methods paper with derivations and a Public Economics paper of pure prose cost the same. Inside the figure sit the writing, the cover sheet, the printed question paper and the courier. There is no minimum order: one subject or fourteen, same rate.

Outside the figure sit three things. The first is the project. MECP 301 Project Work, the four-credit course every fourth-semester group carries, is a research report of its own and is not an assignment; it is handled through the MAEC project route linked below, not here. The second is any delivery guarantee. Delivery depends on your pin code and is confirmed for your order before you pay. No figure is promised on this page. The third is any statement about outcome. No claim is made about the marks any assignment will receive, about how an evaluator will assess it, or about whether it will be accepted. Assignment evaluation is entirely a matter for IGNOU.

That last exclusion is deliberate and it costs this page something. Removing it would be easy and it would also be untrue, because the evaluator at your study centre has never seen this website and owes it nothing.

Reference PDF or Ready Hard Copy: Telling the Two Apart

Two products with similar names solve opposite problems, and MA Economics learners confuse them more often than most because the MEC papers are long enough that both look attractive.

A solved assignment is a soft-copy reference file of model answers for a course code and session. You read it, understand the method, consult your IGNOU study material, and write your own answer. A handwritten assignment is the answers written out by hand on A4 and submitted in hard copy at the study centre. The first is study input. The second is the submission.

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On the question of what may actually be handed in, the MAEC booklets are direct rather than ambiguous. The 2025-26 first-semester paper instructs that you write the answers to all the TMA questions in your own words, that answers stay within the approximate range of the word limit for the section, and that the final version is written down neatly for submission with the points you wish to emphasise underlined. The 2024-25 third-semester booklet adds figures the newer one omits: about 700 words for each twenty-mark question in Section A and about 400 words for each twelve-mark question in Section B. Nothing in either booklet contemplates a downloaded file being handed across a study-centre counter.

So the honest scoping is this: a solved assignment is a reference to write from, not a submission. If a reference file is what you need, take the query to the store’s own MEC solved assignment PDFs listed by course code, which is where that catalogue actually lives. This page does not sell one.

The Nine Compulsory MEC Codes, Semester by Semester

MAEC was restructured under the National Education Policy 2020 into four semesters of twenty credits each, eighty credits in total, and the July 2026 Common Prospectus states that every course in the first three semesters is compulsory. There is no elective decision to make until semester four. The credits are uneven inside each semester, which is why three courses can add to twenty in one and twenty in another.

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Each of the three semesters totals twenty credits — six plus six plus eight, then eight plus six plus six, then six plus six plus eight — and sixty of the programme’s eighty credits are therefore settled the moment you enrol. The numbering is not sequential and should not be read as an error: MEC 203 sits in the first semester and MEC 205 in the second, alongside codes in the 100 range. Those two came into the structure from the revised syllabus and kept their own numbers.

Semester Four: Three Groups, Fourteen Codes, Twenty Credits

The fourth semester is where two MAEC learners in the same batch stop holding the same code list. You choose one specialisation group and complete twenty credits from it, and the prospectus also allows a learner who wants no specialisation at all to take any twenty credits spread across the groups. Six of the fourteen codes below are borrowed intact from other IGNOU programmes, which is why an economics record can suddenly carry an MBA code.

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The arithmetic here repays a second look, because it is the one place in MAEC where a group total is not the number of credits you take. Group A’s six courses add to twenty-four credits. Group B’s seven add to twenty-eight. Group C’s six add to twenty-eight, MWG 111 being the only eight-credit course in the fourth semester. In each case the requirement is twenty, so you are selecting from the group rather than completing it — and that means the number of assignments you owe in the fourth semester depends on which combination you pick, not on which group you joined. Five four-credit courses is twenty credits and five assignments; MWG 111 plus three four-credit courses is twenty credits and four assignments.

Nine plus fourteen distinct codes gives the twenty-three that appear across the MAEC tables. MECP 301 accounts for the difference between twenty-three codes and twenty-two written assignments: it is a project report, and it is prepared through the MAEC project soft-copy route or as a bound MAEC project report, not as part of a ₹320 assignment order.

Four Places the MAEC Papers Contradict Each Other

These were found by reading the July 2026 Common Prospectus against three live assignment booklets on ignou.ac.in rather than by trusting either document on its own. None of them is a reason to worry; all of them are a reason to send your exact codes rather than a semester number.

Programme structures, course codes, submission dates and rules change, and only ignou.ac.in and your Regional Centre can confirm the current position for your enrolment.

31 March or 30 September: Which Date Your Batch Falls Under

Every MAEC booklet read for this page prints two dates as the last date for submission, and it organises them by the examination you intend to sit rather than by the session you were admitted in. That distinction causes more confusion than the dates themselves.

The 2025-26 booklets state that the assignments go to the Coordinator of your study centre by 31 March 2026 if you intend to appear in the June 2026 term-end examination, and by 30 September 2026 if you intend to appear in the December 2026 one. The 2024-25 third-semester booklet prints the same pair shifted back a year: 31 March 2025 and 30 September 2025. So the pattern for the School of Social Sciences is stable — 31 March for the June examination, 30 September for the December one — while the years move with the booklet.

Two consequences follow, and both are practical. First, an MAEC paper is valid across two admission cycles, which the booklets state explicitly: the 2025-26 set covers July 2025 and January 2026 admissions. You are not looking for a paper matched to your admission month; you are looking for the booklet whose session your registration falls inside. Second, if your fourth semester includes MMPC-014, MMPF-005 or MMPF-006, those papers are issued by the School of Management Studies, which prints a different pair of cut-offs entirely. One learner, one semester, two sets of dates. Check each borrowed code against the school that publishes it rather than assuming your MEC dates carry across.

Assignments carry 30 per cent of the final course result and the term-end examination carries the remaining 70 per cent. The MAEC booklets go one step further than most and state that securing at least 40 per cent in the assignment is mandatory to complete the course successfully — a condition worth knowing before you decide to skip a paper and rely on the examination.

Why Your MAEC Paper Says AST and Not TMA

Most IGNOU programmes print an assignment code built around the letters TMA. MAEC largely does not, and a learner who has been told to look for “TMA” on the paper can spend a while failing to find it.

The 2025-26 first-semester booklet prints Assignment Code: MEC-102/AST/2025-26. The 2025-26 fourth-semester booklet prints Asst. Code: MECE-101/AST/2025-26. Both booklets call the paper a Tutor Marked Assignment in their opening letter and both carry “(TMA)” on the inside cover — the letters TMA describe what the paper is, while the letters AST appear inside the code that identifies it. Both are correct and they are not in conflict.

The 2024-25 third-semester booklet is where it gets genuinely inconsistent, because three consecutive papers in one document use three formats. MEC-106 prints Assignment Code: MEC-106/AST/2024-25. MEC-107, on the next page, prints Asst. Code: MEC-107 / AST-1/2024-2025 — a different label for the field, an AST-1 suffix, spaces around the slash, and the year written as a four-digit span. MEC-110 prints Assignment Code: Asst /TMA /2024-25, which drops the course code out of the assignment code altogether and uses TMA rather than AST. The same booklet also labels the marks line “Maximum Marks” on one paper and “Total Marks” on the next.

The rule that survives all of that is simple: copy the code exactly as printed on the paper you are answering, character for character, including whichever label and spacing IGNOU used. Do not normalise it into a tidier form and do not carry a code format from a previous year. When you send your list, the code as printed is more useful than the code as you would expect it to look.

Your Own Handwriting, Copied From a Photo

A packet of MEC answers in a hand that plainly is not yours is a problem for the learner, not for the writer. So the matching step comes before the payment step, in that order, every time.

Send a photo of a page you have written yourself and the handwritten set is matched to your handwriting at no extra charge. The writer works from that sample — letter shapes, slant, spacing, how you form numerals, which is not a small detail on a Quantitative Methods or Econometric Methods paper full of subscripts and matrix notation. A sample page of the returned handwriting comes back to you on WhatsApp, and you decide whether it is close enough before anything is paid.

What makes a usable sample photo

Half a page of your ordinary handwriting is plenty; a full page is better. Write in the pen you normally use, on ruled or plain A4, in daylight, with the camera square to the page rather than at an angle. Ordinary running handwriting is more useful than careful best-effort lettering, because ordinary is what an evaluator has seen on your earlier submissions. If your MEC papers involve equations, include a line or two of numerals and symbols in the sample so the numeric forms can be matched too.

Hindi Medium, Old Cycles and Repeat Courses

The service covers all mediums IGNOU issues the TMA paper in, at the same price. MAEC’s medium of instruction is recorded in the prospectus as English and Hindi, and the MEC and MECE booklets are published in both — the assignment portal carries separate per-semester, per-medium files, so a Hindi-medium learner downloads a Hindi booklet rather than translating an English one.

The fourth semester is the exception, and it is worth reading carefully before choosing a group. The prospectus footnotes Group A with the statement that all the courses of that group are available only in English, and marks each of MCS 226, MCS 224 and MGG 011 English-only individually. In Group B, MMPC 014, MMPF 005 and MMPF 006 each carry the same English-only note. Group C carries no such restriction on any course. A Hindi-medium MAEC learner who wants to work entirely in Hindi is therefore looking at Group C in practice, whatever the programme-level medium entry says. Where a paper only exists in English, it is written in English at the same ₹320, because that is the medium IGNOU issued it in.

On sessions: any session is accepted, current cycle or older, including backlog courses, at the same ₹320 per subject. That covers a repeat MEC-203 from an earlier cycle, a fourth-semester code you deferred, and the older MEC-001 to MEC-009 series that pre-restructuring learners still hold. Send the session printed on your booklet along with the code, because papers expire and are replaced each cycle — a 2024-25 MEC-107 paper and a 2025-26 one are different documents with different questions, and answers written against the wrong year are the most common avoidable error in this whole process.

What to Message, and What to Leave Out

Five things settle a quote. Anything beyond them slows it down.

1. The course codes, copied from your admission record. MEC-104, MECE-102, MMPC-014 — the actual codes, not “second semester” or “all of them”.
2. Your semester, and your group if you are in the fourth. A, B or C, or a note that you are taking twenty credits across groups without specialising.
3. The session printed on your booklet. 2024-25, 2025-26, or whichever cycle your registration falls in.
4. Your medium. English or Hindi, and a note if a borrowed code is only issued in English.
5. Your delivery pin code, and the handwriting sample photo. The pin code settles the courier position; the photo settles the hand.

What to leave out: your enrolment number, your date of birth, your Samarth password, and any scan of an identity document. None of them is needed to write an assignment, and a WhatsApp thread is not the place for them. The fields only you can complete stay blank on the cover sheet you receive, which is the entire reason they are not requested here.

Once the Courier Lands

Open the packet and check three things before the day you plan to submit, not on it. First, that every code you ordered is present as its own stapled set, and that the question paper stapled to each set carries the session you asked for. Second, that the handwriting matches the sample you approved. Third, that the cover sheet for each code names the right course and the right programme.

Then fill the cover fields in your own hand: enrolment number, name, address, programme code MAEC, course code, study-centre code, date and signature. Submit each course as a single document to the Coordinator of your study centre. The booklets are specific about what happens next and it is worth acting on: obtain a receipt for the assignments submitted and keep it, keep a photocopy of what you handed in, and the study centre is required to return the evaluated assignments to you afterwards. The booklet tells learners to insist on that. Assignment marks then travel from the study centre to the Student Evaluation Division and eventually surface against your grade card rather than instantly.

You sign the declaration on the assignment cover page, so you should read and review the content before submitting it, and satisfy yourself that it represents your own understanding of the course.

Economics Learners Usually Add These to the Same Order

Assignments are one of four things an MAEC learner needs in a cycle, and the other three are cheaper to combine than to order separately. If concept clarity is the gap rather than writing time, the unit-wise MAEC help books work through the official blocks code by code, and the MEC-104 guide covering all six blocks of Economics of Growth and Development is the one most often bought on its own. Learners starting the programme from scratch tend to take the first-year six-book combo spanning MEC-101 through MEC-205 instead of buying titles one at a time.

Closer to the examination the useful things change. MEC solved guess papers set out expected questions with worked answers, and MEC previous-year papers with solutions show how the same topic has actually been examined across cycles, which is a better guide to Section A weighting than any prediction. Fourth-semester learners with the project still ahead of them should look at the project route separately, since MECP 301 is not an assignment.

If you would rather write the papers yourself and only want to understand the process, the sister site runs a step-by-step account of how an IGNOU handwritten assignment is prepared and submitted, and the store’s handwritten service hub covering every programme lists the other programme sets. The official papers themselves are free: download them from IGNOU’s own assignment download service rather than from any reseller.

What MA Economics Students Ask First

Does one order cover all nine compulsory MEC codes, or is each ordered separately?

Either. Pricing is per course code, so nine compulsory codes is nine subjects at ₹320 each, and a single code you are short on is one subject at ₹320. There is no minimum order: one subject or fourteen, same rate. Ordering the whole semester together means one packet and one hand throughout.

My paper prints MEC-102/AST/2025-26 and my classmate’s prints Asst /TMA /2024-25. Is one of them wrong?

Neither. MAEC booklets are inconsistent about this and IGNOU has printed several formats, sometimes within a single document — the 2024-25 third-semester booklet uses MEC-106/AST/2024-25, MEC-107 / AST-1/2024-2025 and Asst /TMA /2024-25 on three consecutive papers. Copy whichever version is printed on your own paper, exactly as it appears.

The prospectus calls MEC-107 International Trade and Development but my booklet says International Trade and Finance. Which title goes on the cover sheet?

Use the title printed on the booklet you are answering. The evaluator at your study centre holds that booklet, not the prospectus, so the wording matching your questions is the safer choice. Both titles are genuinely in IGNOU’s own documents for the same code, which is why this page names the discrepancy rather than picking one silently.

I am in Group B and two of my codes are MMPC-014 and MMPF-005. Are MBA codes covered at the same rate?

Yes. A borrowed code is still one subject. MMPC-014, MMPF-005, MMPF-006, MCS-226, MCS-224, MGG-011, MGPE-6, MWG-111 and MGSE-009 all go into the same packet at ₹320 each, and they are not treated as a separate MBA or MCA order.

Do the MMPC and MMPF papers in my fourth semester share the 31 March cut-off my MEC papers have?

No, and this is worth checking before you plan the month. Those papers are issued by the School of Management Studies, which prints its own pair of cut-offs, while the MEC and MECE papers come from the School of Social Sciences with 31 March for the June examination and 30 September for the December one. Confirm each borrowed code against the school that publishes its booklet, or with your Regional Centre.

Is a Hindi-medium MAEC handwritten set available for every code?

For the MEC and MECE codes, yes — IGNOU publishes those booklets in Hindi and the set is written in Hindi. For six fourth-semester codes it is not possible, because the prospectus marks MCS 226, MCS 224, MGG 011, MMPC 014, MMPF 005 and MMPF 006 as available only in English. Where IGNOU issues the paper in English only, the answers are written in English at the same rate.

I want to work entirely in Hindi. Which specialisation group should I be looking at?

Group C, Social Policy. It is the only one of the three that carries no English-only course: MECE 101, MECE 204, MGPE 6, MWG 111 and MGSE 009 have no medium restriction printed against them in the prospectus, whereas Group A is footnoted English-only in full and Group B has three English-only borrowed papers. Confirm with your Regional Centre before you commit to a group, since medium availability can change.

My admission record says MECP 301 but the project pages mention MECP 101, 201 and 202. Which code do I actually have?

The one on your admission record. The July 2026 prospectus lists MECP 301 Project Work in all three group tables, while a note in the same section refers to MECP 201 and MECP 202, and older material circulates MECP 101 and 102. Four codes for one four-credit course is IGNOU’s own numbering history rather than a mistake in any one document, and only your record settles which applies to you.

Is the project report part of this ₹320 handwritten service?

No. The project is a research report of 15,000 to 20,000 words with a synopsis, a supervisor and a viva, and it is not a Tutor Marked Assignment. It is handled separately through the MAEC project routes linked above. This product covers the twenty-two MAEC course codes that carry a written assignment.

Can I print a downloaded MEC solved assignment PDF and hand that in?

That is not what a solved assignment is for. It is a soft-copy reference file of model answers to read and write from; the booklet asks you to write the answers in your own words, neatly, within the section word limits. A printed file is not the submission. If a reference PDF is what you want, the MEC solved assignment catalogue linked above is the right place for it.

I have MEC-001 to MEC-009 backlogs from the old syllabus. Will those still be written?

Yes. Any session is accepted, current cycle or older, including backlog courses, at the same ₹320 per subject. Send the code and the session printed on the booklet you were issued, because the pre-restructuring MEC series and the current MEC-101 series are different papers with different questions.

How many A4 sheets does one 100-mark MEC paper usually run to?

It depends on the paper rather than the mark total. A Section A question in the 2024-25 booklets is set at about 700 words and a Section B question at about 400, so a full paper of two Section A and five Section B questions runs to roughly 3,400 words of answer. In ordinary handwriting that is commonly somewhere between twelve and twenty sides, and a derivation-heavy paper such as MEC-203 or MECE-102 runs longer because of the working. No sheet count is promised in advance.

My booklet says I must score at least 40 per cent in the assignment. Does ordering a handwritten set change that requirement?

It does not. The requirement is IGNOU’s and it applies to the submission however it was prepared. Assignments carry 30 per cent of the final course result and the term-end examination carries the remaining 70 per cent, and the MAEC booklet adds the 40 per cent assignment minimum on top of that. No claim is made about the marks any assignment will receive, about how an evaluator will assess it, or about whether it will be accepted. Assignment evaluation is entirely a matter for IGNOU. What the service removes is the writing time, not the evaluation.

I plan to sit the December term-end examination. Which of the two dates on my booklet applies?

30 September of the booklet’s year. The MAEC booklets organise the cut-offs by examination rather than by admission session: 31 March for the June examination, 30 September for the December one. The 2025-26 booklets print 31 March 2026 and 30 September 2026, and they state that the paper is valid across the July 2025 and January 2026 admission cycles.

Do I pay before seeing what the handwriting looks like?

No. The sample photo goes out first and you approve it before anything is paid. Delivery depends on your pin code and is confirmed for your order before you pay. No figure is promised on this page.

Which Document Each Claim on This Page Came From

Three sources sit behind this page and they are deliberately kept apart, because they do not carry equal weight and one of them is commercial.

The IGNOU Common Prospectus, July 2026. Every course code, official title and credit figure in the two tables above, the eighty-credit total, the four-semester structure, the three specialisation groups, the English-only markings, and the statement that semesters one to three are entirely compulsory. The credit sums were checked against the totals the prospectus prints for each semester and group before the tables were published here: twenty, twenty and twenty for semesters one to three, then twenty-four, twenty-eight and twenty-eight for Groups A, B and C.

Live MAEC assignment booklets on ignou.ac.in. The two submission dates, the AST and TMA code formats, the Section A and Section B mark split, the word limits printed in the 2024-25 set, the two-admission-cycle validity, the receipt-and-photocopy instruction, and the 40 per cent assignment minimum. Three booklets were read: the 2025-26 first-semester paper carrying MEC-102, at the MEC-102 2025-26 booklet, the 2025-26 fourth-semester paper carrying MECE-101, and the 2024-25 third-semester English booklet carrying MEC-106, MEC-107 and MEC-110. Where the booklets and the prospectus disagree on a course title, both readings are printed above rather than reconciled.

Shri Chakradhar Publication’s own commercial terms. The ₹320 rate, hard-copy-only format, included courier, free cover sheet, included question paper, handwriting matching, no-minimum-order and any-session coverage. These are the publisher’s terms and they are not IGNOU rules. They can be changed by the publisher; the prospectus and the booklets cannot.

Written and reviewed by BK Sahni, Founder, Shri Chakradhar Publication Pvt. Ltd. and ignouproject.com, who has guided 5,00,000 students till date. ORCID 0009-0005-8092-459X. Published 17 August 2026. Sources last verified against the July 2026 Common Prospectus and three live SOSS booklets on 17 August 2026. Next scheduled review before 31 March 2027, ahead of the School of Social Sciences cut-off for the June 2027 examination, and again before 30 September 2027.

Important Notice

Shri Chakradhar Publication Pvt. Ltd. and shrichakradhar.com form an independent IGNOU study-support publisher. This is not the official website of Indira Gandhi National Open University, is not affiliated with, endorsed by or authorised by the university, and no page on this site should be treated as an official IGNOU communication.

Programme structures, course codes, submission dates and rules change, and only ignou.ac.in and your Regional Centre can confirm the current position for your enrolment.

You sign the declaration on the assignment cover page, so you should read and review the content before submitting it, and satisfy yourself that it represents your own understanding of the course. No claim is made about the marks any assignment will receive, about how an evaluator will assess it, or about whether it will be accepted. Assignment evaluation is entirely a matter for IGNOU.

No soft copy or PDF is sold. Delivery depends on your pin code and is confirmed for your order before you pay. No figure is promised on this page.