HRD Ministry clears backlog of scholarships with special grant of Rs 250 cr

The UGC and the AICTE have cleared the backlog of scholarships using a special grant of Rs 250 crore from the HRD Ministry, Union minister Prakash Javadekar said Wednesday.

Human Resource Development Minister Javadekar also said the government is "positive" about the demand by research scholars of a hike in the scholarship amount.

"There were repetitive complaints that the scholarships are not being disbursed timely 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 timely get their fellowships credited," he told reporters.

The University Grants Commission (UGC) and the All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE) offer various scholarships to students.

"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 added.

Meanwhile, a group of researchers met the minister Wednesday morning to raise the demand of increasing the scholarship amount for research scholars.

"We are positive about it," Javadekar said. He, however, did not comment on any timeline for the same.