Important Facts For Prelims
Pre-Matric Scholarship Scheme
- 02 Nov 2020
- 3 min read
Why in News
A recent investigation has found that the money meant for poor students under the Pre-Matric Scholarship Scheme in Jharkhand has been siphoned off and is not reaching the students.
Key Points
- About the Scheme:
- It is a centrally funded scholarship scheme for students in all states, which opens every year and has to be applied between August and November.
- Aim: To help students of minority communities viz. Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Parsis, Jains and Buddhists from families with annual income below Rs. 1 lakh.
- Eligibility: Students need to score at least 50% in their class exams.
- Structure of the Scholarship: It is given in two tiers every year to:
- Students in class 1 to 5: Rs. 1,000 per year.
- Students of class 6 to 10: Rs. 10,700 if a hosteller or Rs 5,700 if a day scholar.
- Application Process:
- Eligible students need to register at the National Scholarship Portal (NSP) and submit educational documents, bank account details and Aadhaar numbers among other documents.
- The scheme is online and one can apply for a fresh or renewal scholarship on the NSP or through a mobile application of NSP.
- Suggestions for Improvement:
- The government is planning to bring a single national scholarship scheme by merging all the current scholarship schemes.
- The move came after a multi-crore scam was reported in the post-matric scholarship scheme for Scheduled Castes (SC) in Punjab in August 2020.
- The government is planning to bring a single national scholarship scheme by merging all the current scholarship schemes.
National Scholarship Portal
- It is a “one-stop” solution through which various services, starting from student application, application receipt, verification, processing, and disbursal of various scholarships to students are facilitated.
- It is taken as Mission Mode Project (MMP) under Digital India and aims at providing a simplified, accountable, responsive and transparent system for faster and effective disbursal of scholarship to eligible applicants directly into their account through Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) without any leakages.
