Unaided institutions flay Social Welfare Department

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, February 19 

During a meeting of the Confederation of Punjab Unaided Institutions, Chairman Ashwani Sekhri, said for the last three years, no private college had received any amount under the Post-Matric Scholarship Scheme of the Central Government. Due to the non-payment, many institutions of the state had become non-performing assets in their respective banks. 

He said according to the order of the High Court, private institutes could charge fee from the SC students but looking at the financial conditions and giving benefits to poor students, no institute collected fee from SC students in the recent years. 

But now if colleges do not receive payment of PMS, then private colleges have no choice but to charge fee from poor SC students in the coming 2018-2019 session. He further said the amount of 115 crore and 73 lakh was already available with the Government of Punjab, which had not been released so far. Besides, an amount of Rs 21 crore is lying in the accounts of the state government, to be released to BC students, he added. 

He said, but that amount, too, had not been released and the result would be that the amount be refunded to the Central Government for not being used in time.

Anil Chopra, president, COPUI, said we had met minister Vijay Sampla in this regard and said the Central Government had paid Rs 115 crore to the state government, for which the Central Government had been waiting for the utilisation certificate from the Government of Punjab. He said if the state government gave us the utilisation certificate, then the Central Government would release Rs 500 crore more to the state government. 

Whenever we met Manpreet Badal, the finance minister of Punjab, he always delayed the issue by introducing lame excuses and asking us that he was waiting for the report of revenue auditing. 

General Secretary Vipan Sharma added that according to the notification NO. 3/94/2016-SA1/1493 dated July 22, 2016 —SC students, who had left the college in between the session, his/her fee should be refunded to the Punjab government by the respective institute. The entire episode has been labelled by the state government as a scam by the private colleges, he added. 

He asked the associations of SC category to come forward and joined hands to mark the protest against the policies of the government and to put pressure on the government to release the amount of PMS, failing which all the private colleges would have to charge fee from SC students in the coming session. 

It was further decided by the confederation that if no decision was taken by the state government, then they would resort to a statewide protests against the government.