Rs 6000 annual grant for post-matric students
Shillong, Mar 5: All students pursuing their post-matric education will be provided an annual grant of Rs 6,000 per year to cover their educational expenses.
The financial assistance, which would benefit over 80,000 youth in the state from next financial year, will be provided under CM’s Scholarship Scheme.
Announcing the scheme during his budget speech, chief minister Conrad Sangma on Wednesday said, “A grant of Rs 6000 per annum will be provided to all post matriculate students to enable them to cover educational expenses.”
Later while interacting with media persons, Sangma informed that the government has earmarked Rs 48 crore annually for implementing the scheme.
Underlining the need for introducing the scheme, Sangma said, “Central government has been providing scholarships mostly through the Tribal Affairs Ministry and some through Ministry of Home Affairs and other departments, but these scholarships are not regular, sometimes there’s a lot of gap in the amount that comes in and when it comes in and they release them in instalments.”
The students face a lot of challenges as Government of India release the scholarships in batches – some get and some don’t, he said.
“Many students have asked me and I have clarified to them that these are central government subsidies and scholarships and we are pushing but till they don’t release, there’s not much we can do,” he said.
“Keeping these issues in mind, we felt that the students (because all the feedbacks I get it seems students really need support) while we cannot give them support in every way at least some kind of support from the government side would be good in supporting, promoting and pushing them to do higher studies and that is why we came up with this programme,” he added.
