Senior BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi today hit out at the Bihar state government for doing away with post-matric scholarship for SC/ST students from 2017 and charged Chief Minister Nitish Kumar with punishing the Dalit community for not voting for the Grand Alliance in the 2015 Assembly elections.
The state government has scrapped post-matric scholarship for SC/ST students and instead launched a scheme called student credit card, under which those Dalit students passing out intermediate examination will get Rs four lakh loan for higher studies, he said in a statement.
Sushil Modi, a former deputy chief minister, said the state government first reduced the amount of post-matric matric scholarship to the SC/ST students to Rs 15,000 in the current fiscal as against Rs 1.5 lakh a year ago and now it has decided to scrap the scholarship scheme altogether from the next year.
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Expressing anguish at the state government's move to do away with the post-matric scholarship for SC/ST students altogether, the senior BJP leader said it would jeopardise aspirations of Dalit students for higher studies as the process has not been initiated for grant of scholarship nor application sought from Dalit students enrolled in intermediate courses.
Sushil also asked to clarify whether the loan to the SC/ST student for post-matriculation studies under the student credit card would be the same as the scholarship or the beneficiaries would have to return the funds to lending institutions with interest.
The senior BJP leader alleged that the scrapping of post-matric scholarship to the SC/ST students was a direct fall out of the liquor ban in Bihar as the revenue of the state government would drop substantially.
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