Colleges told to complete process by December 31

Hyderabad: All the degree colleges of the State, under private and government managements, have been told to link the Aadhaar card numbers with the bank accounts of the students who have been availing scholarships granted by the Central government by December 31.

Commissioner of Collegiate Education issued instructions to all the principals of the degree colleges of the State in this regard and told them to submit action taken report at the earliest.

Referring the circular issued by the Central government, the CCE said that central sector scheme of scholarship for college and university students has been brought under Direct Benefit Transfer and the scholarships are being disbursed directly through the bank accounts of the beneficiaries.

The Government has initiated a major initiative of disbursing scholarships through the Aadhaar based Direct Benefit Transfer, which entails targeted delivery of benefits through effective use of technology. It is observed that there has been a slow progress in implementing the Aadhaar based DBT as only 35 per cent of the disbursement has been Aadhaar based, in the last financial year. There was a need to ensure 100 per cent Aadhaar seeding of beneficiaries in the scheme by December 31, 2017.

Achieving 100 per cent Aadhaar seeding is possible only if the State Education Boards undertake the enrolment of all students for Aadhaar and seed the same with the bank accounts on a mission mode. Also authentication of Aadhaar and de-duplication of beneficiary database needs to be undertaken to weed out-ghost or bogus beneficiaries. This would enable better targeting of programmes, resulting in saving of public money.

The Centre has asked the State government to suggest the best practices to the Centre and implement them in their states in ensuring Aadhar to all the students. The State should submit action taken report on the issues at the earliest. In the circular issued to the States, the Centre said that Department of Higher Education of Ministry of Human Resource Development is implementing the central sector scholarship for college and University students since 2008. The scheme is being implemented by the State Education Boards and it has been brought under the direct benefit transfer
programme.

The scholarship amount is deposited in the bank accounts of the beneficiaries. Online applications under the scheme are being invited through the National Scholarship Portal and as far as the current academic year is concerned the process of receiving applications has begun and would be continued till October 31. During the first two years of the National Scholarship Portal, it has been experienced that many institutions had not verified the online applications, thereby making the students in-eligible for the scholarships.

In order to ensure that the students are not deprived of the scholarships for want of verification, the states should give priority to complete the verification process at the earliest.