Virtually declaring a war against the Punjab Government, The State’s unaided colleges on Monday announced that it would charge fees from the Scheduled Caste students, if the post-matric scholarship funds were not released.
The Joint Action Committee (JAC) of 14 associations of more than 1,500 unaided colleges also demanded an amendment in the government’s notification, dated July 22, 2016, issued by the previous government and make the calculations of audit-based on the revised policy.
“As per the notification, the government will not disburse or seek the refund of fee of those SC students who have not completed their course but studied for one, two or three years. The audit teams have calculated the objectionable amount based on this policy with effect from 2011-12 session while it was implemented from 2016-17,” said JAC spokesperson Dr Anshu Kataria, accompanied by its chairperson and senior Congress MlA Ashwani Sekhri.
Kataria said that dropout rate is very high in India, and the claim of dropout students for the period he has studied “is not a fraud”.
They questioned that the government has also applied fee capping on the courses where fee of government colleges is less than the unaided institutes like ITI, BEd, ETT, BA, BCom, BSc etc. “The fee for these institutes is fixed by the government, hence they are liable to receive the same fee for the SC students as well. Due to this policy, these institutes are demanding full fee from SC students,” elaborated Kataria.
Sekhri pointed that due to faulty policy enacted by the previous SAD-BJP government, the institutes are suffering. “Punjab government has also weakened its case of release of scholarship from the Centre by terming the audit objections as embezzlement of funds and fraud. Deductions on flimsy grounds shall serve no bearing on government’s financial health, which have fixed liability of only 60.80 crore per annum till 2016-17,” he said.
Kataria pointed that after farmers, now Educationists have started committing suicide. “Recently, one ITI owner from Muktsar Subhash Bhateja committed suicide. More than half of the colleges have turned into NPA accounts because of the non-payment of funds since last two-three years,” he said.
“Banks have started auctions after taking the possession of NPA accounts. The situation has arisen due to non-release of post matric scholarship from last two-three years,” he said.
JAC also demanded from the Punjab Government to immediately release its share of around Rs 700 crore of total balance of post matric scholarship for SC of more than Rs 1600 crore. “Chief Minister has consented to have a meeting with JAC on June 14 to listen and address our concerns. We are is hopeful of solution to the problems by the CM,” said Kataria.