PM reviews disbursal of scholarships

Expressing concern over the incessant delay in disbursal of scholarships to students, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has urgently sought reasons for the delay and has directed the concerned officials to expedite distribution of the much-needed scholarship funds to needy students, especially those from economically weaker sections of society.

According to official sources, the Prime Minister reviewed the handling of grievances related to long-pending disbursal of scholarships to students at a high-level meeting on May 25.

This newspaper had on May 23 reported how a cash-strapped social justice ministry was unable to disburse funds to states for providing post-matric scholarships to Scheduled Caste (SC) students. Owing to lack of funds, the Central ministry is battling a two-year backlog of funds (2014-15 and 2015-16) to distribute the scholarship money to the states.

Sources said the PM, during the meeting where all the secretaries of Union ministries were present, also enquired about the progress of Aadhaar linkage to disbursal of benefits to students. He is learnt to have urged the concerned officials to increase the speed of addressing students’ grievances.

Sources privy to the development informed this newspaper that the social justice ministry’s backlog runs into thousands of crores of rupees.

While states like UP, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, and Bihar have the highest density of SC students, sources revealed that almost all the states across the country, where these scholarships are disbursed, are unanimous in their demand for arrears.

So severe is the cash crunch that the social justice and empowerment ministry has already used up almost 90 per cent of the funds allocated for the scheme in the Budget for 2016-17 for meeting the arrears of various states. The revised estimates for the head titled “Welfare of SC/ST/OBCs” was Rs 708 crore in 2015-16.

The budgetary allocation for this head in 2016-17 came down to 591 crore.

The objective of the post-matric scholarship scheme for SC students is to provide financial assistance to SC students at the post-matriculation or post-secondary stage to enable them to complete their education.

Scholarships are paid to students whose parents’/guardians’ income from all sources does not exceed Rs 2,50,000 per annum.

The scheme is implemented by the states, which receive 100 per cent central assistance from government of India for the total expenditure under the scheme, over and above their respective committed liability.