Chennai: Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday to withdraw the recent revision of guidelines for the post matric scholarship scheme. In a letter to PM Modi, the CM stated that the fees claimed against the management quota, spot admission seat in any institution or university will not be reimbursed with effect from April, 2018 as per the recent guidelines.
“I wish to state that in Tamil Nadu, a large number of poor Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribe students who are not able to get admission under the Government quota on merit, have been availing the benefit under the post matric scholarship scheme under management quota seats in self financing colleges,” the letter said.
Hence a large number of these students join higher and technical education institutions in the state. In fact, this scheme has benefitted the state to achieve a higher gross enrolment ratio. The new guidelines will create a huge setback in achieving the goal of social equity and social justice, as it will deny opportunities to poor SC/ST students in the fields of higher and technical education. This may cause serious resentment and unrest among the SC/ST community.
It is relevant to point out that even though increased awareness has resulted in increased admission of SC/ST students into higher education, allocation in the central budget has remained stagnant for the past many years, the letter said.
This has resulted in the accumulation of a huge amount of pending reimbursement to the state by Government of India, which affected the scheme's implementation at the field level. For instance, Rs.1803.50 crore has accumulated as arrears pending reimbursement to Tamil Nadu up to March, 2018.
Apparently, the above move intends to curtail expenditure within the budget sanction, instead of extending the benefit to all eligible students. Under the circumstances, the right course of action should be to step up allocation substantially rather than making modifications in the guidelines to curtail the existing benefits. I request that the scheme may be funded with a sharing pattern of 60:40 between the Centre and state respectively, as in the case of other central schemes. This will bring more clarity in scheme funding, the letter explained.
