The Centre today assured it will reimburse the payment to 5,000 students of Jammu and Kashmir who were availing benefits of a special scholarship scheme.
"There are 5,000 scholarships for Jammu and Kashmir students - 250 each for Medical and Engineering and 4,500 for other subjects - and we are committed to that," Union Minister of Human Resource Development M M Pallam Raju said at the sidelines of a function here.
"We will ensure that the payment will be done on time and to the students who have been identified," he said.
The Minister was responding to a question about students' claim that the scholarship amount was not being disbursed to colleges where they are studying.
Several students from the state made a representation to the Human Resource Development Ministry earlier this month, seeking its intervention alleging that they were being harassed by the administration of private colleges as payment of the scholarship has "stopped since past one year".
However, the Chief Minister, who was also present at the function, intervened and said, "the problem is not the Centre".
"This is a reimbursement scheme. Colleges or students will get the money reimbursed to them after they had paid. I think we need to understand the modalities of the scheme before we ask the Centre what they are doing," Omar said.
"The fact of the matter is, these students will have to make payments to the colleges and subsequent to that, the Centre will reimburse the money that has been placed for them under the scheme," he said.
"Where this has been done, where this payment has already been made and there is a problem with reimbursement, I will take it up with the Minister," he said adding, "first let the payment be made, then the Centre will reimburse it.
