New Delhi: The Government has revised the funding pattern of the Post Matric Scholarship scheme for SC students and has adopted a ratio of 60:40 sharing between the Centre and States of the average demand for the scheme for three years period 2017-18 to 2019-20, with a 5 percent annual increase each year.
Earlier, the Union Government used to bear the 90 percent of funding.
Minister of State for Social Justice and Empowerment Rattan Lal Katariain, in a written reply in Lok Sabha on Tuesday, further informed that the total annual assistance to be provided to students under the scheme would be the entire non-refundable tuition fees of the course, and academic allowance as per the rates fixed for the course group.
To minimise the fraud, the union government has decided to release the scholarship on DBT mode directly into the bank accounts of the students from 2021-22.
The scheme is based on the principles of timely delivery, comprehensive accountability, continuous monitoring and total transparency and shall be run through an online platform with robust cyber security measures eliminating any chance of misappropriation of the funds.
The state of Himachal Pradesh has witnessed a multi crore scholarship scam in which scholarship were disbursed fraudulently. Investigating agency had booked official of state education department and even attached property of accused.
