Chandigarh, May 6
Scholarship applications of 20,000 students belonging to minority communities in Haryana have been gathering dust at the Department for the Welfare of Scheduled Castes and Backward Classes office over the past two years, and nobody seems to have cared a tad.

While students who applied for the scholarships (Rs 4 crore in all) may have graduated to the next class despite financial hardships, the department entrusted with the task of watching their interests just does not seem interested.

With most of the money coming from the Government of India, the department faltered in dispatching scholarships, sent by way of drafts, for the academic years 2008-09 and 2009-10. Ideally, these should have reached the students (Sikhs and Muslims essentially forming the minority groups in the state) in the September of the session applied for.

In 2009-10, a total of 19,589 scholarships were sanctioned of which 15,000 plus were for pre-matric students. While a whole year went by without action of any kind to give the assistance money to the students, the department has got 8,000 drafts prepared over the past two days. The remaining 11,589 drafts are under preparation.

With the bank being able to deliver 2000 drafts in a day, the department is hopeful of sending all drafts to their district social welfare officers (DSWO) over the next 10 days for disbursal.

While Rs 211.23 lakh is meant for pre-matric scholarships, Rs 70.06 lakh is meant for post-matric scholarships and Rs 74.40 lakh is to be given under the “merit-cum-means” category.

Similarly, for the year 2008-09, as many as 850 drafts of the 5,885 sanctioned applications which came back to the department are being re-validated and sent to the respective DSWOs for distribution.

Senior officials maintain that the scholarships could not reach the students on time because of a financial hitch.

“The Centre has laid down that not more than one per cent of the scholarship money can be spent as administrative cost. In that money, it was not possible to send the drafts.

“We have now worked out a plan by which these will be disbursed by our local officials in every district. We will be able to finish dispatching all scholarships by mid-May,” a senior officer said.

Applications for scholarships meant for minority community students, given under three categories (pre-matric, post-matric and merit-cum-means) are invited after which the demand for the same is sent to the Government of India and the money received by the state government.

Barring the pre-matric scholarship in which the state government contribution is 25 per cent, the others are entirely funded by the Centre.

With the ball set rolling, hopefully, the money will reach the students it is meant for shortly, before the department invites fresh applications for the academic session 2010-11.