The Social Justice and Empowerment Ministry would launch a senior citizens’ helpline called Elderline, start an anti-drugs campaign with 13,000 youth volunteers and roll out the revamped Post Matric Scholarship Scheme for Scheduled Caste students in 2021-2022, a top official said on Thursday.
Secretary of the Department of SJ&E R. Subrahmanyam said the allocation for the Ministry for the coming financial year was its highest-ever — ₹10,517.62 crore, 28% more than the outlay in the revised estimate of ₹8,207.56 crore for 2020-2021, he said.
The overall allocation for the welfare of the SCs by all Ministries had increased by 51.65% from ₹83,256.62 crore in the 2020-2021 BE to ₹1,26,259.20 crore in the BE for 2021-2022, the Ministry said. Mr. Subrahmanyam said the 31 schemes of the department had been restructured into 19. He said contradictory and overlapping schemes were streamlined leading to improved synergy.
Among the schemes mentioned by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman was the Post Matric Scholarship scheme, for which ₹5,000 crore would be spent every year. Under the new model, 60% of the funds would be given by the Centre and 40% by the States. Mr. Subrahmanyam said the Centre would transfer its share into the accounts of the beneficiaries once the State’s share is transmitted. He said the department was in talks with the States for August 15 and January 26 as the two dates in a year for transferring the scholarship amounts.
The department would be launching special schemes under the Senior Citizen Welfare Fund for helping start-ups that have come up with products and services for the elderly, the Ministry said. The Elderline would be launched to take distress calls and help senior citizens resolve their problems.
The Nasha Mukt Bharat Abhiyan in 272 districts would be strengthened with 13,000 youth volunteers to spread the message of “say no to drugs”, the official said.
Mr. Subrahmanyam said the project monitoring unit would be strengthened and physical inspections of all institutions funded by the department would be carried out. He said the unit had recently found that 280 institutions were ‘malfunctioning’ and grants had been stopped to 201 of them.