Centre triples scholarship amount for minorities in MP

Bhopal: With the aim of promoting education among minority communities, the Centre has tripled the scholarship amount for them in Madhya Pradesh and a total of Rs 20 crore would be distributed among the minority students of pre-matric, post-matric and merit-cum means.

Madhya Pradesh Commissioner for backward classes and minorities welfare, Jabbar Dhakwala said that the students of minority communities will be benefitted with the increased tripled amount to be given for them by the Centre.

He accepted that there were various problems for students in filling the scholarship forms and at times the schools and colleges did not fill the columns meant for them, and added that from the next academic session, students will not face such problems again as it has been decided to hand over this responsibility to private parties.

Dhakwala said that as Madhya Pradesh is a Hindi-speaking state, students from minority communities cannot take advantage of the scholarship as the form for it is in English and runs into five or six pages.

Dhakwala said that there were many complaints that even for a minor mistake in the spelling of names on cheques, schools and colleges on many occasion denied accepting them and this caused problems for the students.

He said that cash will be distributed directly to the schools and colleges for those students who will benefit under the scheme from the next academic year on the financial inclusion system.

Dhakwala said that there were suggestions from the people to reduce the number of pages in form and there should be one form for all the classes of scholarships.

He said that the date of filling for the scholarship form expired on August 17 but he has written to the Centre for the extension of the same as many more applications are expected in this regard.

"Schools and colleges in many states were closed due to precautionary measures for swine flu and thus a lot of students did not apply for the scholarship in time," he said.

Dhakwala said that he had urged the Centre to extend the date for the pre-matric scholarship upto August 31, post-matric upto September 15 and merit-cum means upto October 15 so that more students could benefit from it.