Post Matric Scholarship for Minority Students

The Director of Miniority Welfare Officer, Bangalore.

Appeal to

This is thefourth year of centrally-funded Post-MatricScholarshipscheme for minority students inKarnataka to be started.Thanks to The Central Government's Post-Matric /Pre-Matric Scholarship scheme, one of three megaminority scholarshipschemes being runin the country, is for minority students studying in junior, degree, and PG classes (non professional).

Reasons of poor implementation in Karnataka

1) No written instructions to college/School principals by the Educational authorities. This being a new scheme introduced by the Government of India/Karnataka, the Educational authorities should organized workshops in their Taluka /Districts and proper instructions should be given . No official notice to students for submission of their scholarship forms. (2) Lack of co-ordination among junior and senior colleges.

The application form for the current year 2012-13 duly corrected to be placed so as to get the form in advance for the formalities etc. to be fulfilled and be submitted to the Institutional authorities.

3) Non-seriousness, irresponsible, non- cooperative behaviour by the authorities and concerned college staff, and lack of effective implementation mechanism at college/university level. This may be the reasons for not receiving proper guidance by the Educational Authorities in Karnataka.

4) Students are unaware /have misconceptions about income declaration and community declarations as School and college staff didn't guide properly. (Rs 10 bond paper is not available, therefore a revenue stamp is to be pasted and signed by the parent. But still students are making affidavit by expending hundreds of rupees).

5) Opening no frill a/c at Syndicate Bank /StateBank of India with whom state government has is a major problem for the minority students. Bank staff didn't provide application forms. Besides, application form consists of 9-10 pages whileState Bank of Hyderabadprovides single page form to SC/ST students. In bank, introducer is required. Students find it difficult to have signature of introducer.

But there are some other major problems in the way of the scheme becoming a complete success in the state.

Appeal to CM, PM

The eligibility criteria for Post-Matrict Scholarship scheme are unjust. For example, the minimum 50% marks in previous exam is not right as this is not a condition for students of SCs/STs or EBCs to get their scholarships. Besides, the upper annual income limit for parents in minority scholarship case is Rs 2 lakh while for OBCs it is Rs 4.5 lakh,

Moreover, the scheme is not being properly advertised. The advertisement should be published in some mainstream newspapers, not in local/regional or Urdu papers.

Lack of awareness in masses/target group is a major issue. Besides, there is a negative opinion among minority students. They think it useless to submit forms as they think they won't get scholarship, and they have proof. For Pre-Matric Scholarship, The most important reason of poor implementation of the scheme, may be the reason that Karnataka Government doesn't have minority welfare Officers at local or district levels to monitor the implementation of different welfare schemes. Such directorates and their complete network up to district/taluka level is present in Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu etc.

There is also lack of NGOs and social welfare organisations in this field.. "Some other individuals/groups must unite and work in an organised manner to resolve policy-level and implementation-level issues by well coordinating with govt officials.

As per schedule 16th August was the last date of submission of Post-Matric forms , but this being a new scheme, the last date should be 30thSeptember for at least two /three year till popularization of these scheme and thereafter it should be normalized.

It is pointed out that the websitewww.gokdom.com though this website give the information and details of facilities etc. but the application form for pre-matric and post -Matric for the current is not available duly corrected the year etc. This is to be done to avoid further hardship while downloading the forms.