No reduction in scholarship amount for ST & SC students: CM
In the face of strong protestfrom opposition political parties and students, Odishagovernment on Sunday decided not to slash the post-matricscholarship amount for Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribesstudents.
“There will be no change in the amount of post-matricscholarship for SC & ST students,” Chief Minister NaveenPatnaik said in a statement.
Patnaik said the students will continue to get thesame amount of scholarship as they availed in the previousacademic year.
The chief minister also asked the department of ST andSC Development to put the notification issued by it on hold.
The department was also ordered to send the official file inregard to slashing the scholarship amount to the ChiefMinisters Office for further verification.
With the decision, there will be no change in post-matric scholarship amount being sanctioned for the SC/STstudents in Odisha, an official said.
Earlier, the department in a resolution had announcedits decision to reduce the post-matric scholarship amount forST and SC students in at least 15 courses including, B Techand MBA.
However, the department had decided to increase thenumber of courses to be covered under the programme fromexisting 27 to 99 in the 2020-21 academic session.
As per the resolution of ST and SC developmentdepartment, an eligible student of ST or SC community wassupposed to get Rs 25,000 scholarship for B Tech course in thenew academic session against the previous allocation of Rs60,000 in previous academic sessions.
The students belonging to ST and SC communities areentitled to get scholarship for pursuing higher education inany government and government-recognised private college andinstitution if their family income is below Rs 2.5 lakh perannum.
While the Opposition Congress had condemned the stategovernments act of reducing the scholarship amount, theOdisha Private Engineering College Association, also stronglycriticised the decision of reducing the financial benefits forthe poor ST and SC students in the middle of the pandemic.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by The Federal staff and is auto-published from a syndicated feed.)
