For all the needy meritorious and talented students belonging to different social categories, the Odisha Government has decided to set up a State level Scholarship Council soon with a huge corpus fund.
Chief Secretary GC Pati on Friday chaired a meeting where details of constitution of the proposed council were discussed and a structure was finalised. Development Commissioner UN Behera, ACS Finance R Balakrishnan, Principal Secretary, Higher Education GK Dhal and Principal Secretary, Home and ETE&T Asit Tripathy were present.
The main objective of the corpus fund would be to augment resources from both private and public undertakings which are showing interest to provide scholarship to needy meritorious students. Recently, Vedanta floated such a scheme while other corporate houses are also showing similar interest.
An official said the corpus fund would be to the tune of Rs 500 crore, though the shape of the fund is yet to be finalised. To enhance the Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER), the aim is that no one should be left out of higher education.
The Chief Minister would head the council, whose Vice-Chairmen would be the Ministers of Higher Education, School & Mass Education, Employment, Technical Education & Training (ETE&T), Science & Technology, Women & Child Development and ST & SC Development.
Members would be the Chief Secretary, the Development Commissioner and the Secretaries of the concerned departments.
The council would provide a common portal for various scholarship schemes of the Central and State Governments. The scholarship amount would be directly transferred to the bank account of the scholar as the application would be Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT).