The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved the provision of 70 lakh scholarships to students from the minority communities under its pre-matric, post-matric and merit-cum-means based schemes till the year 2020.
Union Minister of Law and Justice Ravi Shankar Prasad told a media conference that under the three schemes, the government provided 60 lakh scholarships to students of this category during 2017-18.
"To meet the next target of 70 lakh scholarships, the total expenditure is going to be Rs 5,338.32 crore," he said.
The union minister also said that technology is being used in transferring scholarships directly to the accounts of the beneficiaries to avoid duplication and other problems.
The major features of the schemes are:
- These Schemes shall be implemented through the National Scholarship Portal (NSP) and scholarships are disbursed through the Direct Benefits Transfer (DBT) mode.
- Around 70 lakh scholarships are likely to be disbursed.
- The scholarship is awarded to students who have secured not less than 50% marks in the previous final examination.
- The students should be studying in Government Schools/ Institutes or recognized private schools/ institutes.
- The State/Community-wise target/allocation as per Census 2011.
- Physical targets are fixed only for fresh scholarships.
- Renewal scholarships are also awarded, in addition to the fresh scholarships. Renewal scholarships are for all such students who have been awarded scholarships in the previous years and fulfill the eligibility criteria.
Pre-matric Scholarship Scheme:
- The objective of the Scheme is to encourage parents from minority communities to send their school going children (from Class I to X) to school, lighten their financial burden on school education and sustain their efforts to support their children to complete school education.
- The annual income of parents/ guardian should not be more than Rs 1.00 Lakh.
- Target-30,00,000 (Thirty lakh) for Fresh applicants.
[With inputs from IANS and Press Bureau of Information]
