Under fire for pending or delay in payment of ‘Shagun’, the Punjab Government has now decided to provide the compensation amount to the SC, BC girls 15 days before their wedding.
The State Government on Wednesday in principle decided to provide the compensation under its popular Shagun scheme from January 2015. The decision was taken by Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Badal in a meeting with senior officers of Social Security, Finance and Social Welfare department on Wednesday.
Sukhbir has asked the Social Welfare secretary Seema Jain to simplify the procedure with self-attestation of documents to avail benefits in hassle-free manner under shagun scheme.
To check the duplicity of beneficiaries, Sukhbir has advised the department to cross check beneficiaries randomly and if any illegality was established then recipient would be liable to pay the double penalty and further punitive action.
Reviewing the ongoing welfare schemes for students belongs to SC, BC and minorities in the State, Deputy Chief Minister has asked the officers to organise a meeting with the education department and issue instructions to all heads of educational institutes to make sure that all scholarship cases must be sent within time to provide financial help under post-matric and pre-matric schemes.
Besides, he also directed the department to popularise the scholarship schemes through an advertisement campaign within next 15 days.
Giving details, Jain informed the Deputy Chief Minister that `394 crore have already been released to 5,92,523 SC, BC students from 2009 to 2014 under post-matric scheme and all scholarships were disbursed up to 2014.
Under pre-matric scholarship scheme, `42.68 crore were also distributed to 1,89,705 SC students in 2014-15. Besides, department has received `376 crore under this scheme for 2014-15.
To get registration for scholarships, Punjab Government’s web portal was a huge hit gone up to the 3.05 lakh mark. Sukhbir asked the department to remove the upfront payment for BC students to avail the benefit under this scheme.
Taking a serious note of non-deposition of Utilisation Certificates (UCs) by the departments in some cases, Sukhbir asked the officers concerned to ensure that the same be deposited in next week.
Sukhbir added that the State Government would raise the issue with Union Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment to include Punjab under Pradhan Mantri Adarsh Gram Yojna (PMAGY) under which 1000 villages would be developed having 50 per cent or more SC population.
Punjab has the highest SC population, 31.94 per cent, in the country and Punjab must be included in this scheme along with Assam, Bihar, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu. Notably, 2,800 villages (23.01 per cent) in the State have more than 50 per cent SC population.