As Punjab Governor Banwarilal Purohit sought a report from the Punjab government on several students from the Scheduled Caste (SC) category dropping out of colleges owing to non-payment of scholarship amounts by the State government, the issue is yet again in the spotlight. Meanwhile, the government asserts to take any decision on pending amounts only after a ‘comprehensive audit’.
The State government has made it clear that while the Post-Matric Scholarship Scheme for SC students is running smoothly in the State from 2020-21, any decision surrounding the pending amounts for disbursal under the scheme for SC students, which pertains to years between 2017 till 2020, would be taken after doing a comprehensive audit.
According to the government data, for the years between 2017-18, 2018-19, 2019-2020, the pending amount for disbursal of Post-Matric Scholarship for SC students is ₹1,563.77 crore. In the 2022 State Assembly election, the delay in disbursing the scholarship amount had become a key political issue with the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) pushing the previous Congress government to the wall.
