Cabinet nod to revising post-matric scholarship scheme for SC students

The government on Wednesday announced “transformatory changes” to the Post Matric Scholarship for students from Scheduled Castes.

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs approved the changes, which, the government said, will “benefit more than 4 crore SC students in the next 5 years so that they can successfully complete their higher education”.

Union Social Justice and Empowerment Minister Thawarchand Gehlot said that the government has decided that the share pattern will be 60 per cent from the Centre and 40 per cent from the state.

“The result will be that till now we annually gave Rs 1,100 crore, an average that we have calculated for the last three years, but now we will give more than five-fold,” he said.

The Centre’s assistance, which was around Rs 1,100 crore annually during 2017-18 to 2019-20, would be around Rs 6,000 crore annually during the 2020-21 to 2025-26 period, the government said in a statement.

The statement said that under the revised scheme, there will be a total investment of Rs 59,048 crore, of which the Centre will spend Rs 35,534 crore.

Under the scheme, the government provides financial assistance to students from Scheduled Castes, whose household incomes are less than Rs 2.5 lakh annually, for higher education at post-matriculation and post-senior-secondary stages, which means Class XI onwards.

The government intends to bring students from Scheduled Castes who dropped out of the education system back into the system. It will launch a campaign “to enrol the students, from the poorest households passing the 10th standard, in the higher education courses of their choice”, a statement said.

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