By Pervez Bari, TwoCircles.net,
Bhopal: Scholarships will be given to more than 56,000 students belonging to the minority communities this year in Madhya Pradesh. An amount of Rs. 20.35 crore will be distributed to these students in the form of pre-matric, post-matric and merit-cum-means scholarship. Under the minority class, students belonging to the Muslim, Sikh, Christian, Boudh and Parsi communities are being given the benefit of scholarship.
The process of giving scholarship to students belonging to the minority communities has been made transparent and the distribution process is also simplified. The Department of Minorities and Backward Classes has started a web portal so that the students belonging to these communities can see the position of the scholarship from any corner of the state. The students can see the position of scholarship on the department’s website http://www.bcwelfare.mp.nic.in/.
The Union Minority Welfare Ministry has lauded the distribution process of scholarship in Madhya Pradesh at a meeting held recently.
The Union Minority Welfare Ministry was so impressed with the process of scholarship distribution in Madhya Pradesh that it has sent the software prepared by the state to other states and asked them to implement the same process there also.
Under the pre-matric scholarship, more than 50,000 applications have been received this year, that is around 18,000 more than last year.
This year Rs. 3.85 crore has been sanctioned for distribution as scholarship to pre-matric students of minority communities. For the post-matric scholarship more than 10,000 applications from students of minority communities have been received this year. Comparing to last year this is around 7,000 more applications. Rs. 10 crore has been
sanctioned this year for distribution as scholarship to post-matric students of minority community students. For the Merit-cum-Means scholarship 600 new and 400 renewal applications have been received this year. Comparing to last year this is 300 applications more than last year. For the Merit-cum-Means Scholarship Rs. 3.50 crore has been sanctioned this year.
Assistant Director, Directorate of Minority Communities Yashpal Singh has been appointed as nodal officer for scholarship distribution. If any problem is faced in connection with scholarship, Yashpal Singh may be contacted on telephone number 0755-2553329 for getting information.
Earlier, the Directorate of Minority Communities used to get the work of scholarship done through outsourcing. During the outsourcing work a lot of mistakes were committed while making data entry. This has been causing delay in getting scholarship to the students. To remove this lacuna, the Department of Minority Welfare has established IT cell at its office situated at Satpura Bhavan, Bhopal in coordination with National Information Centre, (NIC). ([email protected])