Proposal to double student loan subsidy awaits approval

Chandigarh: The Syndicate will take a call on the recommendation of a five-member committee constituted by VC Prof Raj Kumar to review the merit-cum-means loan subsidy scheme. The committee, in its meeting on July 30, found that the education loan subsidy may be given on the basis of merit-cum-means basis out of the interest earned on the corpus of Rs 1 crore to the students who have taken education loan from any nationalised bank for courses in the university. The members discussed the existing guidelines of the scheme. They were told that only one student applied to avail of the scheme in 2015-16. They found that there was a corpus of Rs 1 crore under the scheme and the interest earned till date is Rs 92 lakh, while the total available balance is Rs 1.92 crore (approx). The committee suggested that the loan subsidy, which was equal to 20 per cent of the loan amount availed by the student and was subject to a cap of Rs 25,000 in each case, may be doubled to Rs 50,000. It stated that only the students whose family income was less than Rs 4.80 lakh a year could apply for the subsidy. It was also proposed that the loan subsidy shall be released directly to the bank after completion of the course subject to the condition that the student has secured 60 per cent marks or equivalent grade throughout the course and completed his degree within specified duration. It was also suggested that the student must not have any other financial support and must submit a certificate from the loan sanctioning bank. The committee has also proposed that the unspent amount of the interest of a given year shall become a part of corpus of the year.