40K students face bleak future due to pending scholarship
FP VIEW
Isn’t it high time that the government kept aside a corpus for such exigency expenditure? It is true that such a pandemic of this magnitude could not be assessed by anyone, but then foresight to tackle emergency situations must be developed and Covid situation in many ways is an eye opener and the plight of the students who did not get the scholarship is clearly seen by one and all. It must now be mandatory for the government to keep a fund ready in case any emergency comes up in future because students who get this money depend on it and any kind of break in the chain can upset their plans and it will be difficult to bring them back on the track.
Indore: Covid-19 pandemic has not only affected academic activities but has also badly hit the exchequer of government which could not provide scholarship to students pursuing higher studies due to financial constraints.
Around 40,000 students belonging to SC/ST and OBC category in the district have not got scholarship for even session 2019-20.
They now face bleak future as their colleges are threatening not to forward their examination for examinations if they did not submit fees for last and current academic session.
Some of aggrieved students led by Youth Congress leader Abhijeet Pandey staged a demonstration at collectorate over delay is disbursement of scholarships.
“Students who did not get scholarships are from both government and private colleges. However, 80 per cent students are from private colleges which have threatened not to let students continue their studies without payment of fees,” said Pandey.
He said that the government should clear scholarship of students for their uninterrupted studies.
The protesting students stated that they have been making rounds of local office of Tribal Welfare Department located at collectorate for past many months but they were returned blank all the times.
“We can’t continue to live in uncertainty. We want to know when our scholarship will be deposited in our bank accounts so that we can pay our fees,” they said.
Scholarship in-charge in Tribal Department, Madhulika Shukla assured the protesting students that soon the scholarship amount will be deposited in the accounts of students. Following the assurance, the students ended the protest.