Hyderabad: Meritorious students from Other Backward Classes, minorities, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes have been losing out on the Centre’s merit scholarships due to apathy of the state Education department for the last few years.
The scholarship ranges from Rs 1,000 to Rs 2,000 per month from higher secondary to graduation levels. The Centre offers 22 types of scholarships for these students to pursue higher studies and the money is directly credited into the bank accounts of the students. The applications need to be forwarded by the state government but it has failed to coordinate with the nodal officers appointed by the Centre to implement these schemes.
On the other hand, around 1 lakh students each in Gujarat, Maharashtra etc. benefit from these schemes every year due to the initiatives taken by those state governments. Telangana, meanwhile, recorded a dismal 12,000 beneficiaries in the last two years.
The schemes are offered by the Union HRD, tribal affairs, minority affairs, Social Justice, Physically Challenged and Labour departments. The Centre has issued directions to all states to take up awareness programmes in schools regarding these schemes to enable students apply for these scholarships. Instructions were given to governments and schools to display information about these schemes on their notice boards prominently.
But hardly any of the government departments or schools in Telangana follow these norms and the end result is that students are not submitting applications due to lack of awareness about these schemes. Not only students and parents, even the headmasters and teachers of are unaware of these scholarships. The government and officials have now woken up with the deadline of December 20.
“Directions were issued to all district education officers to inform students and process their applications on a war footing to meet the December 20 deadline. Instructions have been sent to all schools to accept applications from students immediately. From next academic year, all steps will be taken to create awareness among schools and students regarding these schemes,” said Mr Kadiam Srihari, deputy Chief Minister holding the education portfolio.
The minister has convened a meeting with education officials in the last week of December to discuss the measures to be taken to ensure maximum number of beneficiaries from Telangana. In a way, it will also bring down the burden of the TS government on scholarships, if more students are covered under the central schemes.
