Punjab Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh on Sunday urged the Centre to review the revised guidelines for the Post Matric Scholarship scheme for Scheduled Castes, saying that these amounted to the Central Government indirectly absolving itself of contributing any money towards the scheme in Punjab, as the current annual expenditure in the state was expected to be much less than Rs 700 crore.
Capt Amarinder, in a letter written to the Union Minister of Social Justice and Empowerment, Thaawar Chand Gehlot, cited the revised guidelines, dated May 3, 2018, received by his government to note that the move was highly detrimental to furthering the career prospects of poor SC students, who could not pay the high tuition and admission fees being charged by the educational institutions at the time of admission.
He pointed that para XV of the guidelines had resulted in greatly enhancing the annual committed liability of the State Government from Rs 60 crore to over Rs 750 crore, which was unsustainable for his Government.
Chief Minister said that the revised guidelines ended up defeating the very objective of the Post Matric Scholarship Scheme for Scheduled Castes and would only serve to put the SC students in a highly disadvantaged position, besides imposing an unmanageable financial burden on his Government.
“Some of the private educational institutions in Punjab has already started demanding advance fees from the SC students citing these new guidelines,” said the Chief Minister while urging the Union Minister to re-examine the revised guidelines and take necessary steps to safeguard the interest of the Scheduled Castes and share the financial burden of implementing the scheme.