Within a week of police lathi-charging SC students at Nawanshahr protesting to demand benefits under centre’s post-matric scholarship scheme, the Punjab Government on Tuesday constituted three-member probe panel to look into the issue.
Announcing the constitution of probe panel after meeting a delegation of affected students, the State Welfare Minister Gulzar Singh Ranike said that the panel would look into the allegations of denial of post-matric scholarship to the eligible SC students in the colleges run by Rayat Bahra Group, KC Group and Doaba Group.
More than 12 students, including three girls, have received serious injuries in the incident. The students were protesting against the Government asking for their due money under the Post-Matric Scholarship Scheme for the Scheduled Castes (SC) and Other Backward Classes (OBC).
Condemning the lathicharge on the students, Ranike said that it was mandatory for all educational institutes to provide benefit of all welfare schemes including Post-Matric scholarship to all eligible students. He said that in the case of failure or laxity shown by any institute, “Government would not hesitate to take strictest possible action against erring institutes”. He said that the three-member panel, with Welfare director Alaknanda Dayal as its head and Roopnagar District Welfare Officer Jasvir Singh Dhillon and Jalandhar District Welfare Officer Rajinder Singh as its members, would conduct a checking in these educational institutes.
The Minister said that the panel will conduct checking in the institutions and submit the report to Welfare secretary Seema Jain. Giving details about disbursement of amounts under Post-Matric scholarship, Ranike said that the state had disbursed Rs179.21 crore to Technical Education and Industrial Training director for 456 educational institutions in 2014-15, where 56,496 SC students have been studying.
He said that Rs10.64 crore has also been issued for 13,338 students of 316 ITIs in the State. Minister added that the state had disbursed Rs4.64 crore for 1459 students of Rayat Bahra institute of Shaheed Bhagat Singh Nagar, Rs2.97 crore for 877 students of KC Group and Rs2.42 crore for 808 students of Doaba Group.
Ranike said that the state had also made post matric scholarship to scheduled castes students online through Ashirwad portal to make this scheme virtually transparent.
He said that all payments were being transacted into the bank accounts of students and education institutes. He said Rs437.67 crore has been disbursed in 2014-15 for 4,69,802 students.