The Centre has stopped its share of funding for the post-matric scholarships and tuition fee reimbursement for Scheduled Caste students for 2021-22 and 2022-23 as the State government has not adhered to the new conditions laid down by the former.
The programme was run on 60:40 sharing between State and Central governments till 2020-21 but the ratio was reversed to 40:60 from the following year. The Centre allowed the State to share only 40 % of the budget from 2021-22 on the condition that it furnished details of each student. Also, the tuition fee reimbursement which was a bigger portion of releases to every student will not be routed through the State government but credited directly to the bank accounts of the parents. But, this was not acceptable to the State as it feared the parents might spend the money for their needs and delay payments to colleges. Since, the college managements will not condone any delays there was always the threat of the managements disrupting the academic year of students.
The State government was in any case paying maintenance charges as part of scholarships directly to the parents accounts. And, this was also not an issue with the Centre.
Moreover, the Centre did not lay down the same rule of direct benefit transfer to ST students. The Ministry of Tribal Welfare released the money to college managements unlike the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment which dealt with SCs.
A senior official told The Hindu that another reason why the State did not agree to the new rule was on account of issues of synchronising of funds. It effectively meant that the Centre will release money to individual accounts only after ensuring that the State had deposited its share. The State government might not have money readily available on occasions in which case the Centre will also delay the payment. Similarly, the Centre might not be ready with funds when the State proposed to deposit its share. This will again give handle to colleges to go tough on students.
Such problems had cropped up in Andhra Pradesh which was implementing the Central rule of direct payments to colleges. The delays in release had resulted in several protest demonstrations by students.
In the absence of Central funding in 2021-22, the State government released the money to students from a special quota through the SC Development Department. Only the senior students got scholarship with the department adjusting the money from other head of accounts in its budget this year.
