Kalinga Shiksha Yojana to include all courses

In a bid to help more meritorious students who stop enrolling for higher education due to lack of funds, a scheme called ‘Kalinga Shiksha Sathi Yojana’ (KSSY) has now been extended to all courses being pursued in all educational institutions.

The State Cabinet on Friday approved a Modified KSSY under the provisions of the scheme. The State Government would provide education loan at only one-per cent interest per annum to students for higher education.

Earlier, the KSSY was favouring students pursuing courses like Management, Law, Engineering and Medicine.

Though the scheme was launched in 2016 to bring down the financial burden on the parents of the students who want to move forward with higher education, it was confined to Management, Integrated Law, Medicine and Engineering. So, more meritorious students were not able to take advantage of the KSSY.

Under the Modified KSSY, now a student can avail loan from scheduled banks for pursuing higher studies under any discipline, for which interest subsidy is applicable. The scheme would give them up to Rs 10 lakh to proceed for the higher courses. According to the rules of the scheme, a student can get a maximum of Rs 10 lakh as an educational loan. There is no minimum loan amount mentioned in the scheme. One can get any amount of loan up to Rs 10 lakh. The period of repayment is increased from 10 years to 15 years including the moratorium period. The applicants would have to pay only one-per cent interest on the loan amount.