JAC of unaided colleges to move court

Gagan K Teja

Tribune News Service

Patiala, October 20

With the Punjab Government making amendments in the post-matric scholarship scheme sponsored by the Centre and directing all unaided colleges to refund the fee 

of all those SC students who did not complete their course, the Joint Action Committee of the unaided colleges in Punjab has decided to approach the Punjab and Haryana High Court against these changes.

The government has ordered an audit into admissions of scheduled caste students in all unaided colleges since the day the scheme was started. However, officials rue that they were never asked to keep a record of all those students who got themselves enrolled under the scheme and now it was practically impossible for them to get the original documents of all students verified as majority of them had passed out and were working at different places.

Notably, under the scheme, which started in July 2010, it was mandatory for the state colleges not to charge any fee from the scheduled caste students. This fee was to be reimbursed directly to the beneficiary i.e. the student that would later pay the fee to the college. However, hundreds of cases were registered against the students as they would complete the course but not pay the fee to the colleges as it arrived directly in their account. Following this, the government started reimbursing the money to the colleges.

However in 2016, the then Akali government made certain changes in the scheme and asked all colleges to refund the fee for previous years of all those students who did not complete their course and now the colleges are in a fix. They rue that it was not their fault if the students did not complete the course and they cannot refund the money for the years the student has studied with them. As per records, there are 3,606 colleges in the state which have enrolled over 3.12 lakh SC students under this scheme.

Now, State Welfare Minister Sadhu Dharmsot has ordered a third audit of these colleges alleging that some colleges had shown dummy admissions of SC students and claimed their fees from the government.