On the eve of the Union Budget, I request the Union Minister for Finance, Mr Arun Jaitley, to remove anomalies and ambiguities in the interest subsidy given on educational loans that are taken out by economically backward students.
The new scheme announced during the last Budget had a big flaw. On the one hand, it says all educational loans of economically backward students sanctioned prior to April 2009, will be eligible. On the other, it has a clause which says those who benefitted in the original scheme are not eligible to apply under the new scheme.
This leaves those poor students, who were given partial relief under the first scheme, high and dry. The original scheme said loan amounts released after April 2009 would be eligible, irrespective of the sanction date. The circular issued by the Indian Banking Association and the Ministry of Human Resource Development were not clear. So, different banks interpreted this clause differently.