Scholarships Worth Rs 250 Crore Cleared By HRD Ministry’s Special Grant, Stipends May Also Increase

University Grants Commission (UGC) and All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), using a special grant from the Ministry of Human Resource Development (HRD), have cleared the backlog of scholarships, Economic Times has reported.

Union HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar confirmed on Wednesday (26 December) that a special grant of Rs 250 crore was issued by the ministry to clear the backlog. He also said that the government is “positive” about research scholars’ demand of a hike in the scholarship amount.

“There were repetitive complaints that the scholarships are not being disbursed on time by the UGC and the AICTE. We issued a special grant of Rs 250 crore and now the entire backlog has been cleared and from now on the recipients will get their fellowships credited on time,” the minister was quoted in the report as saying.

A group of researchers met Javadekar on Wednesday (26 December) morning and raised the demand for increasing the scholarship amount for research scholars.

"The government spends Rs 4,000 crore annually for scholarships to nearly 2.5 lakh students. Some of them are the JRF, merit-cum-means-scholarship, Jammu and Kashmir scholarship, GATE scholarship and Ishan Uday scholarship," Javadekar informed.

The special grant by the ministry comes in wake of protests by researchers from various institutes for a hike and timely disbursal of their monthly stipend.