By A Mirsab, TwoCircles.net,
In a disclosure that is likely to upset minorities across the nation, the Ministry of Minority Affairs informed Rajya Sabha on Tuesday that 70.16% of Budget Estimates (BE) for the current year remains unutilised till date.
However, for the year 2014-15, 97.7% of budget earmarked at Revised Estimate (RE) stage was utilised by the Ministry. This Information was given by Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, Minister of State in the Ministry of Minority Affairs in reply to a question in Rajya Sabha.
Ministry of Minority Affairs has allocated budget of Rs 3,712.78 crore at BE stage under Plan for 2015-16. Out of this, Rs 1,955.20 crore (52.66% of the BE) has been allocated for Scholarship Schemes and Rs 1,757.58 crore (47.34% of the BE) are for other welfare and development schemes for minorities.
The Ministry says that the expenditure under the scholarship budget is low i.e. Rs 37.08 Crore only as on date because National Scholarship Portal (NSP) was launched during this year in July, 2015 and the last date for submission of application by the minority students was October 31, 2015.
Conversely, Azad Yuva Brigade, a Marathwada-based NGO that monitors and handles issues encountered by Muslim students, alleges that the government is not serious in helping minority students. Else, this fund would not have gone unutilised.
Waseem Siddique, Vice President of Brigade told TwoCircles.net,” This is true that NSP is launched this year but the new requirements it has asked to fulfill to avail scholarship are rigid and too time consuming. If government is serious in helping minority students then it could have either appointed a special department to help students or could have at least extended submission date”.
Siddique says there are 11 scanned copies of documents that NSP asks students to upload. Out of these, nine are compulsory and that is the main reason that students could not submit forms before deadline.
“The nine documents such as domicile, father’s yearly income certificate, minority certificate etc require some time to obtain because these documents are issued by different government departments,” Siddique said.
On the other hand, whenever new procedures are introduced, Siddique said,”Government must show some flexibility if students for whom schemes are launched are not able to benefit from it.”
The Ministry says that as per work flow on NSP, the applications are thereafter scrutinised online by the respective institutions followed by the State Governments/UT Administrations and submitted to the Ministry and that such applications for scholarships have not been received.
This was the reason that Ministry of Finance exempted Scholarship Schemes of the Minority Ministry from expenditure limit in the last quarter of the financial year.
Siddique says that social activists from Maharashtra have written to the Ministry of Minority Affairs, apprising them of the hurdles that students faced. A delegation also met Naqvi requesting him to find a smooth way that may help students in availing timely scholarships without any difficulty.