HYDERABAD: Relaxing its stand that pre-matriculation scholarship application forms should only be submitted online, the state government said the students can also present their documents by hand. It has also extended the deadline for submission of forms to January 15.
According to sources, the decision has been taken following information that relatively fewer students had applied for scholarship through online system until December 31, the previous deadline.
The scholarship applications submitted by the students, particularly from Urdu medium schools across the state, had shown an alarming decline. Until two days ago we had received only about 2,500 applications from students of Urdu medium schools while the number of beneficiaries last year was nearly three lakh. “The main reason for this decline is the change in policy to ask students to submit their applications online. They used to fill in the conventional forms by hand and submit personally or through their schools. These students come from socially and economically backward backgrounds. They have no access to computers and have no one to help them with the filling in and submission of the forms online,” sources at the minority welfare department revealed.
There are hardly a dozen Urdu medium schools in the private sector. All others are managed by different government agencies. The government offers three levels of scholarship at the pre-matriculation level in Urdu medium schools. Each economically backward student between second and fifth standards receives Rs 200 per year; for a student of sixth and seventh standards the scholarship is pegged at Rs 600 per year and for those who are studying in eighth, ninth and tenth classes, it is Rs 800 per year.
The scholarship scheme is offered for all other schools at two levels beginning from the sixth grade. The beneficiaries of this scheme were about 1.5 lakh last year.
The Minority Finance Corporation is extending assistance in the collection of application forms from the students from the Muslim, Christian and other communities, Ilyas Rizwi, its managing director, said.
Meanwhile, sources said that the interest in continuing the schemes initiated by the late chief minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy for the minority community had disappeared. For instance, they said that the government had given about 1,000 computers to madrasas (religious schools) under the madrasa education modernization scheme during the last two years. But this year the scheme was cancelled. Also discontinued was the scheme to run Urdu medium open schools for the students who do not go schools or are dropouts. The government used to give furniture, black boards etc., to the Urdu medium schools under the infrastructure facilitation scheme. That too has been stopped.
“The situation at the minority welfare department is grim. And there is no one to question why these schemes are being curtailed or discontinued,” added the sources.
Source : TOI