In order to widen the access to higher education, the State Government has decided to provide financial assistance to the children of underprivileged families.
Higher Education Secretary Bishnupada Sethi held discussions with senior officials of the Department of Higher Education (DoHE) here in this regard on Friday.
While the DoHE is implementing various schemes to make higher education inclusive and increase the gross enrolment ratio, it decided to start a new one for underprivileged family students.
The existing programmes include E-Medhabruti, Kalinga Sikhya Sathi Yojana and Green Passage to provide free education to orphan students pursuing Plus II to post-graduation education.
Under the new “Financial Assistance Scheme”, students of underprivileged class would be provided ` 20,000 annually for pursuing both graduate and postgraduate courses.
And the financial assistance will be limited to the duration of the course and will be given each year till completion of the course. The DoHE has listed the eligibility criteria for applying under the scheme.
Under the scheme, students should belong to families such as HIV/AIDS-affected ones, parents suffering non-curable diseases, landless or homeless families, a child of a single mother and women-headed families in case of non-earning spouses.
The students should have enrolled for undergraduate and postgraduate courses on regular mode in the recognised colleges, institutions and universities in the State. And income of the family from all sources, to which a student belongs, should not be more than ` 1 lakh per annum.
Financial assistance would be provided for all approved undergraduate and postgraduate courses, both nontechnical and PG courses, offered by the Government and recognised by the Government.
Students, who satisfy the eligibility criteria, are to apply online. The applications would be available in the DoHE.
The financial assistance would be through bank accounts; so, the DoHe has requested the students to provide a copy of the bank account, which is needed to be Aadhaar-based.
A district-level committee headed by the district Collector would scrutinise and finalise the eligible students; and the committee would forward it to the DoHE for release of payment in favour of the students.