Odisha CM announces the scholarship amount for SC and ST students will not be reduced

The Odisha government has recently announced that the monetary amount for the post-matric scholarship set for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes students will not be reduced, despite strong protest from opposition political parties and students.

Odisha’s Chief Minister, Naveen Patnaik, also issued a statement in which he said, “There will be no change in the amount of post-matric scholarship for SC & ST students.” He also said that the students will continue to get the same amount of scholarship as they availed in the previous academic year.

CM Patnaik said that the notification issued by SC and ST Development department has been asked to put on hold. The department was also ordered to send the official file in regard to slashing the scholarship amount to the Chief Minister's Office for further verification.

With the decision taken by the state government, an official confirmed that there will be no change in the amount of the post-matric scholarship that has been set up for students who belong to the SC and ST categories.

The decision



to reduce the amount of post-matric scholarship for SC and ST students was announced earlier in at least 15 courses including, B Tech and MBA. It was later decided to increase the number of courses to be covered under the programme from the existing 27 to 99 in the 2020-21 academic session.

As per the resolution of the ST and SC development department, an eligible student of the ST or SC community was supposed to get a Rs 25,000 scholarship for the B Tech course in the new academic session against the previous allocation of Rs 60,000 in previous academic sessions.

If the family income of the SC or ST student is below Rs 2.5 lakh per annum, then they are entitled to get a scholarship for pursuing higher education in any government and government-recognized private college and institution.

While the Opposition Congress had condemned the state government's act of reducing the scholarship amount, the Odisha Private Engineering College Association, also strongly criticised the decision of reducing the financial benefits for the poor ST and SC students in the middle of the pandemic.