No change in amount of post-matric scholarship for SC/ST students: Odisha Chief Minister

There will be no change in the amount of post-matric scholarship for SC & ST students, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik said in a statement.

Odisha government has announced that it has decided not to slash the post-matric scholarship amount for Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe students. The move comes after the government faced strong protests from the opposition political parties and students. 

"There will be no change in the amount of post-matric scholarship for SC & ST students," Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik said in a statement. Mr Patnaik said the students will continue to get the same amount of scholarship as they availed in the previous academic year.

The Chief Minister also asked the SC and ST development department to put the notification released by it on hold. The department was also ordered to send the official file regarding slashing the scholarship amount to the Chief Minister's Office for further verification.

With the decision, there will be no change in post-matric scholarship amount being sanctioned for the SC/ST students in Odisha, an official said. Earlier, the department in a resolution had announced its decision to reduce the post-matric scholarship amount for ST and SC students in at least 15 courses including, BTech and MBA.

However, the department had decided to increase the number of courses to be covered under the programme from the existing 27 to 99 in the 2020-21 academic session.

As per the resolution of ST and SC development department, an eligible student of the ST or SC community was supposed to get a Rs 25,000 scholarship for the BTech course in the new academic session against the previous allocation of Rs 60,000 in previous academic sessions.

The students belonging to ST and SC communities are entitled to get scholarships for pursuing higher education in any government and government-recognized private college and institution if their family income is below Rs 2.5 lakh per annum.

While the Opposition Congress had condemned the state government's act of reducing the scholarship amount, the Odisha Private Engineering College Association, also strongly criticised the decision of reducing the financial benefits for the poor ST and SC students in the middle of the pandemic.

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