State corporation to give education loan under credit card scheme

PATNA: Miffed with the indifference of bankers towards the Bihar government's ambitious students' credit card (SCC) scheme, the state cabinet on Saturday gave its nod to the formation of a Bihar State Education Finance Corporation (BSEFC) for providing loan to students up to Rs 4 lakh under the scheme.
The BSEFC, to be headed by a chief executive officer -cum-managing director, will have 131 officials and employees. The cabinet also okayed fixation of honorarium for them. The CEO-cum-MD with be given a monthly honorarium of Rs 2.5 lakh. His deputy — general manager (administration) — will get an honorarium of Rs 2 lakh per month. "The BSEFC is being formed because the bankers were apathetic to the SCC scheme," said cabinet secretariat department's special secretary U N Pandey.

Since the launch of the scheme on October 2, 2016 by CM Nitish Kumar, 30,000 applications were received from students for loan assistance. However, loans could be given only to 412 applicants. Pandey said the corporation would start functioning from April 1 this year. It will have equity share of Rs 9.5 crore.