In a big push for education of students belonging to Scheduled Caste, the Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved Rs 59,000 crore post matric scholarship for next five years.
The Cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi estimated that this mega scholarship scheme will benefit more than four crore students for continuing their education from class 11. The Central Government will spend 60% of the programme which is estimated at Rs 35,534 crore. The rest will be provided by the State Government.
“This replaces the existing ‘committed liability’ system and brings greater involvement of the Central Govt in this crucial scheme,” the Union Cabinet said in a statement.
Detailing the scheme, Social Justice and Empowerment Minister Thawarchand Gehlot said that as per the estimates, around 1.36 crore poor students from SC community could not continue their education beyond class 10 due to poverty.
“The Post Matric Scholarship scheme for Scheduled Caste students allows students to pursue any post-matric course starting from class 11 and onwards, with the Government providing the cost of education. The focus of the scheme would be on enrolling the poorest students, timely payments, comprehensive accountability, continuous monitoring and total transparency,” said Gehlot.
“A campaign will be launched to enroll the students, from the poorest households passing the 10th standard, in the higher education courses of their choice. It is estimated that 1.36 crore such poorest students, who are currently not continuing their education beyond 10th standards would be brought into the higher education system in the next 5 years.
The scheme will be run on an online platform with robust cyber security measures that would assure transparency, accountability, efficiency, and timely delivery of the assistance without any delays,” said the Minister.
The States will verify the eligibility, caste status, Aadhar identification and bank account details of the applicants on the online portal. Transfer of financial assistance to the students under the scheme shall be on DBT mode, and preferably using the Aadhar enabled payment system, said Government in a statement detailing the mega scheme. Starting from 2021-22, the central share (60%) in the scheme would be released on DBT mode directly into the bank accounts of the students as per fixed time schedule, after ensuring that the concerned State Government has released their share.
The monitoring mechanism will be further strengthened through the conduct of social audits, annual third party evaluation, and half-yearly self-audited reports from each institution said the statement.