NE EDUCATION BUREAU
NEW DELHI, FEB 9
As many as 2,942 Tamil Nadu Scheduled Castes (SC) students have received Rs 99.16 crore financial aid for pursuing higher education under the National Fellowship Scheme over a period of five years, Rajya Sabha was informed by the government on Wednesday.
This information was given by Minister of State for Social Justice and Empowerment A Narayanaswamy in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha.
Earlier the disabled included only 7policies, but after the act of disabilities of 2016 we have included nearly 21 disability programs.
We have increased the reservation policy from 3% to 4 % in the employment and private sector and thus we have increased the statistics.
— A Narayanaswamy (Modi Ka Pariwar) (@ANarayana_swamy) February 9, 2022
The Department of Social Justice and Empowerment implements the Central Sector Scheme of ‘National Fellowship for SC Students’ to provide fellowship in the form of financial assistance to students belonging to Scheduled Castes (SC) category to pursue higher studies leading to MPhil/PhD in Indian Universities/Institutions/Colleges recognized by University Grants Commission(UGC).
This is a Central Sector scheme directly implemented by the Ministry without involvement of the State Governments and since the year 2018-19 the selection of students is done on the basis of merit determined through the National Eligibility Test (NET) examination of the UGC and the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research(CSIR).
Therefore, State/District wise allocation of funds is not done and district-wise data of beneficiaries is not maintained. However, the details of the number of SC students from the State of Tamil Nadu, who were granted financial assistance under the scheme and the funds disbursed/utilized thereon, for the last five years, are as under:
| Year | Funds disbursed/Utillized
|
No. of beneficiaries |
| 2016-17 | 22.13 | 744 |
| 2017-18 | 20.31 | 713 |
| 2018-19 | 23.92 | 662 |
| 2019-20 | 21.03 | 497 |
| 2020-21 | 11.77 | 326 |
| Total | 99.16 | 2942 |
