Nagpur: The National Power Training Institute (NPTI) has held back educational certificates of its 30 final-year students from the 2019-20 batch following state government’s delay in granting them scholarship for 2018-19.
Another 19 students from the current session face the hurdle until the issue is resolved. The students are from the remaining batches since the Centrally-run institute decided to stop the lone undergraduate course Bachelor of Engineering (Power) four years ago.
The affected students belong to OBC, VJ/NT category that witnessed a couple of policy revisions between the NDA and MVA government. These students are entitled to 50% scholarship in fee ranging from Rs1.10 to 1.28 lakh. The course is unaided and students have to pay the full course fee as decided by state’s Fee Regulatory Authority.
NPTI deputy director Shekhar Mahant told TOI they have been taking an undertaking and releasing the documents. “Some students are reluctant to give the undertaking that in case the state government doesn’t release the scholarship for 2018-19, they will pay the amount. We understand they may have to appear in exam or need certificates for employment. Due care is taken to ensure no academic or job loss is incurred,” he said.
Mahant said the government has released the scholarship of SC/ST students from the same batch.
“When MahaDBT was started, this course was dropped from scholarship list. Later, we pursued the matter with government. But a year was lost and in new GR, though BE (power) was included, no provision was made for retrospective application of the policy. Hence, all such students are facing the problem,” he said.
Divisional commissioner (social justice and welfare department) Siddarth Gaikwad said the government had taken note of the problem and will soon fix it.
Babasaheb Ambedkar National Student’s Federation founder president Atul Khobragade warned of agitation in case the scholarship was not released at the earliest. “Students are suffering due to the the mismanagement of higher education department and social welfare department,” he said.
Led by Khobragade, the aggrieved students had met Gaikwad a couple of days back. They appealed to the government to expedite the scholarship disbursal in order to save them from academic and job loss.