Punjab to have its own scholarship scheme: Channi

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, August 12

As Dalit students are being denied free admission in colleges under the SC Post Matric Scholarship Scheme, owing to the prevailing Centre-state differences, Technical Education and Industrial Training Minister Charanjit Singh Channi today said the state would ensure the maximum benefit to the SC students in pursuing higher education.

The minister said a proposal to reintroduce the scheme through the state government would be brought up in the next Cabinet meeting.

“We cannot let our Dalit students suffer, owing to the wrongs of the Centre. We are in the process of issuing suitable instructions to the colleges soon, to allow free admissions to the SC students from this year itself. We will try to cover the maximum number of poor SC students in the scheme,” he said.

Channi was visiting the district administrative complex here for distributing 15 mobilephones to Class XII students of Government Senior Secondary School, Kartarpur, near here.

Hitting out at the SAD-BJP alliance, Channi said, “They have always been anti-Dalit and we intend to launch a protest against their decision to withdraw from the scheme and leave the SC students in a lurch.”