By TCN News,
Mumbai: Mumbai chapter of the Students Islamic Organization of India (SIO) has organized a demonstration on 19th June at Azad Maidan in Mumbai to protest against the lethargic and step-motherly approach of the State Government regarding scholarship for minority students.
“Due to the lethargic attitude of the Congress-NCP government and the callous attitude of the authorities towards minorities, the amount of Rs 15 crore which is transferred from central government for clear sanctioned applications for scholarship, is still lying in the Bank of Maharashtra” said Mr. ADIL, secretary of SIO Maharashtra unit, while talking to Media persons on the occasion.
The protest rally has been attended by a large number of students from different parts of the city.
After the rally a delegation of SIO met Joint Director of Higher Education of the state, Mr. Shantikumar Gupta and handed over a memorandum to him explaining the total scenario and situation going on within the state education department.
Notably, the central government allocated 64,400 scholarships for the students of minority communities in Maharashtra under the post-matric scholarship scheme for the year 2009-10. Due to improper and poor publicity of the scheme by the Government of Maharashtra, only 24,064 applications were received by the administration. After due verification and scrutiny of the applications by the Directorate of Higher Education the data of the students as well as proposal was sent to the central Ministry of Minority Affairs. Later, the central government cleared Rs 15 crore for the scheme in the state. Ideally and legally, the respective amounts should have been transferred to the students by the month of April 2010. But it did not happen and the amount of Rs 15 crore is still lying in the Bank of Maharashtra.
SIO has demanded the government to make a fair inquiry into the matter and take action against officials who are misusing their positions and taking unconstitutional and illegal steps and also the list of students, to whom the scholarship has been approved by the central government, be made public and the amount received from the central government be transferred to the students/colleges immediately