Sir,
The Prime Minister Special Scholarship Scheme (PMSSS) which was started to encourage economically weak students for pursuing higher education, from the troubled State of Jammu and Kashmir is proving to be a complete failure. The delayed release of scholarships to the students has cast clouds over the future of these students.
The colleges affiliated to All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE), which provide admission to such students, haveconsidered the option to cancel their admission or asked them to pay the fee on their own.The distressed students are now against the AICTE.
“We are facing lot of problems.AICTE has not even released our last year’s scholarship money. This year, nine months have passed and yet funds haven’t been released. The college authorities are humiliating us again and again.” said a student from Jay Pee College.
Every year thousands of students were forced to give up their courses after a fund freeze. The students who approached AICTE did not get any response and after some time authorities said that their admission didn’t fall under the guidelines framed by UGC for PMSSS.
According to the data given by Inter-Ministerial Committee, created by MHRD to implement the scheme,in 2011-12 only 38 students registered themselves, but with awareness number of registrations kept on rising and reached 4585, until 2015-16 when the strength decreased to 406. Out of 25000 only 10118 were awarded with the scholarship money.
The scheme was launched in 2011 by UPA Government following the unrest in the state in 2010. A budget of Rs. 1200 crores was released with an objective to provide 5000 scholarships every year for different academic courses.
Yours etc…..
Ravia Gupta
on e-mail
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