Spl scholarship: Colleges refusing admission to students not to get aid

JAMMU: The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has apprised the Inter-Ministerial Committee (IMC) of Higher Education, Ministry of Human Resource Development (HRD), about the alleged refusal of colleges to give admission to students of J&K under the Special Scholarship Scheme (SSS) to whom provisional admission letters were issued during the centralised counselling process.

Vikas Sharma

Tribune News Service

Jammu, December 24

The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has apprised the Inter-Ministerial Committee (IMC) of Higher Education, Ministry of Human Resource Development (HRD), about the alleged refusal of colleges to give admission to students of J&K under the Special Scholarship Scheme (SSS) to whom provisional admission letters were issued during the centralised counselling process.

Sources said the members of the Inter-Ministerial Committee in a meeting on the Special Scholarship Scheme for J&K, which was held under the chairmanship of the Secretary, Higher Education, HRD Ministry, had taken serious note and decided that the grant to such colleges would be stopped.

Sources added that during the crucial meeting, the chairman, AICTE, gave a brief description of the scheme and raised the issue regarding the representations received from students for not being considered for the award of the scholarship as they had taken admission on their own or could not participate in the counselling process on the scheduled date.

“A representation has been received from the J&K Government regarding students not being considered under the scheme as they have studied outside the state under the Goodwill Mission. The committee was told that as per the scheme, the awardees under the Special Scholarship Scheme for J&K would be selected only from amongst the students who appear for the Class XII or equivalent exam through the State Board of J&K and CBSE-affiliated schools located in the state,” a statement said.

The sources claimed that fresh scholarship for the academic year 2014-15 was to be released after ascertaining that how many students actually took admission after counselling. They added that mid-term appraisal of the scheme would also be undertaken immediately. Further, the AICTE would initiate the counselling process for the academic year 2015-16 well in time and also the counselling to be made broad-based to enable more and more students to apply for the scholarship.

The AICTE chairman observed that for the improvement in the implementation of the scheme, every effort should be made to initiate the scholarship process well in advance and directed the AICTE to upload the list of all approved engineering colleges and other colleges approved under Section 12B of the University Grants Commission Act, 1956, on the website of the AICTE and the Higher Education Department of the J&K Government so that the students were aware of the colleges where they could seek admission.