J&K students suffer as AICTE delays scholarships yet again
Vikas Sharma
Tribune News Service
Jammu, September 17
There seems to be no end to the woes of thousands of the students hailing from J&K pursuing various undergraduate courses in different streams from colleges across the country under the Prime Minister’s Special Scholarship Scheme (PMSSS) due to the delay in release of scholarships by the All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE).
The aggrieved students are now up in arms against the AICTE claiming that due to the non-release of scholarships the colleges were mulling the option to cancel the admissions.
“We are facing a lot of problems. What to talk of this year’s scholarship amount, the AICTE has not even paid our last year scholarship. The college authorities are humiliating us time and again only because the AICTE has not released the funds. We called up the AICTE officials, but they replied in a rude manner,” Abhijot Magotra, a student from Jammu pursuing Bachelor in Mass Media (BMM) from Wilson College, Mumbai, told The Tribune.
“In fact, some students are yet to receive the scholarships for the academic session 2014-15 and 2015-16. Even this year is almost over and we are yet to receive the funds,” Abhijot claimed.
Another aspirant, Aman Atri, pursuing BTech from Chaggan Lal Gehlot Institute of Engineering and Technology in Pali district in Rajasthan, said: “Now the colleges are mulling the option to cancel admissions. If this happens, it will ruin our career. At present, we are completely frustrated with the prevailing chaos in the system. Students have not received the scholarship amount for the last year too and the way things are going at the moment, clouds of uncertainty looms large over the non-release of scholarship for this year too.”
“We have sent e-mails a number of times to know the actual status, but there is absolutely no response. The AICTE officials have now stopped picking our calls even,” Rohit Raina, a student of Keshav Mahavidyalaya in Delhi, claimed.
Sources claimed that some students, who had approached the AICTE authorities as well as the state government representatives, were informed that their admission did not fall under the norms framed by the UGC for the PMSSS and they had sought admission through agents and NGOs.
As per the data available, a total of 3,330 students were selected for the Central scholarship scheme for the academic session 2017-18. For professional courses, there were 2,830 seats, including 1,585 for Open category, 226 for Scheduled Caste (SC), 311 for Scheduled Tribe (ST) and 708 for Social and Economically Backward Class (SEBC). For general courses, there were 280 seats in Open category, 40 in SC category, 55 in ST category and 125 in SEBC category.
Scheme covers tuition, hostel fee
- An expert group was constituted by former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on August 18, 2010, to enhance employment opportunities among the state youth and to formulate a job plan involving public and private sectors
- The scheme, which is also known as AICTE J&K Scholarship, covers tuition fee, hostel fee, cost of books and other miscellaneous charges
- The scheme provides Rs 30,000 tuition fee for general courses, Rs 1.25 lakh for engineering courses and Rs 3 lakh for medical courses along with hostel fee up to Rs 1 lakh
Eligibility criteria
Students having domicile of J&K and should have passed 10+2 examination from the state board or the CBSE located in the state. Only those students who are willing to study outside J&K and whose family income is Rs 6 lakh or below per annum are eligible to get this scholarship.
