Sitting at home, students in Karnataka can now apply for a number of scholarships without even visiting any government department, thanks to the state government for taking an initiative to bring all scholarship schemes under one roof for the benefit of students.
The state government has recently developed an Aadhaar-enabled digital platform, integrating various scholarship schemes to achieve a ‘one student, one scholarship’ policy of the Central government.
“The system will have a common application allowing students apply for a scholarship online, without having to visit government departments. More importantly, the system will ensure students receive scholarships on time,” Additional Chief Secretary T M Vijay Bhaskar was quoted as saying by a news agency.
He said that various departments offer scholarships to students right from Class 1 to higher education level. Right now, students manually send applications to their institutions, because of which, in many cases, they receive scholarships very late in the academic year.
“So, we want to bring all government-funded scholarships in one place, with which they will be made available in the month of August,” he added.
The move from the state government is in line with the Central government’s decision to ensure one student receives only one scholarship.
“An Aadhaar-enabled payments system will ensure scholarships are remitted directly to the students’ bank accounts. We had cases where amounts were being sent to different accounts, which will be stopped now,” he explained.
Expanding further on the state government’s initiative, Backward Classes Welfare Secretary Mohammad Mohsin termed it a massive exercise.
“Presently, our department provides scholarships through the National Scholarships Portal, but others don’t. I only hope the common application system will be able to handle the load,” Mohsin said.
As per information from the CMO, about 1.47 crore students receive scholarships under Social Welfare, Backward Classes Welfare, Minority Welfare and Higher Education departments.
With the new initiative, the common application system will be linked with the Student Achievement Tracking System run by the State Education Department, which has details of every school-going child in the state.
“Hence, for pre-matric scholarships, all that a school headmaster needs to do is key in the student’s name and, the details will be retrieved automatically. As a result, there will be no delays,” Bhaskar said.
Developed by the Department of e-Governance, the new system, which has been tested, is most likely to be made available from this academic year itself.
“The state has also asked the Union Ministry of Minority Affairs to consider linking their software with this,” he added.
