All the Technical and Higher Educational Institutes of the State have agreed to fix the maximum limit for their fees for Scheduled Caste students studying under the Post Matric Scholarship scheme. This was discussed in the meeting held under the chairmanship of Mr. Sarvesh Kaushal, Chief Secretary Punjab, with the representatives of various private Universities, private Technical Institutes and private higher education colleges of the State. Chief Secretary briefed the representatives that the objective of this scheme is to provide financial assistance to the Scheduled Caste students studying at post matriculation or post-secondary stage to enable them to complete their education. In the last financial year, certain anomalies and irregularities have been highlighted by Government of India in the implementation of the scheme by the private institutions in the State.
The representatives of the Educational institutes agreed to adopt the fees structure as notified by Department of Technical Education/ Punjab Technical University for various technical/professional degree, diploma and certificate courses. For the remaining courses, the lowest fees out of Punjab University, Punjabi University, and GNDU will be the maximum that will be charged from SC students . Chief Secretary asked all the Education Institutes to upload the details of beneficiaries of the scheme like Name, Aadhaar number, Matriculation roll number, Attendance Record, results record etc on public portal for better transparency. All the Educational Institutes involved in the scheme will also submit an undertaking to the Department of Welfare stating that there is no duplication in the beneficiaries’ list submitted to the State and also the beneficiaries’ details have been uploaded on the portal. A special focus should be made on duplication in Inter-State and Intra State beneficiaries.
Chief Secretary formed a 9 member scrutiny committee of the representatives of the Educational Institutes to be chaired by Mr. Ashok Mittal, Chancellor Lovely Professional University to scrutinize the enrolment, attendance, marks, identification related data of the beneficiaries and submit the final report in next 2 months. The Scrutiny Committee will include Satnam Singh Sandhu- Chancellor- Chandigarh University as Co- Chairman, Dr. Anshu Kataria-Chairman - Aryan Group of Colleges as Secretary , Sh. Gurvinder Singh Bahra- - Chancellor- Bahra University, Sh. Manjit Singh- Doaba Group of Colleges , Sh H.S. Jawanda- Bhai Gurdass Group of Institutes,Sh S P bansal-President- B Ed Colleges, Sh Mandeep Singh- President- Polytechnic Association and Sh Manmohan Garg- Gurukul Institutes as Members. To improve transparency, it was decided to give access of the Aashirwad portal (website for Post Matric Scholarship) to all the stakeholders including the Education Institutes concerned with the scheme.
CS also asked the NIC to have meeting with the committee to improve the working and performance of the portal for hassle free usage of the portal by the colleges. It was also decided that all the colleges will introduce Biometric Attendance System in next 3 months so that bogus beneficiaries of the scheme can be eliminated.From the Education Institutions’ side, the meeting was attended by Mr. Ashok Mittal, Chancellor LPU, Dr. Madhu Chitkara, VC Chitkara University, Dr. Zora Singh VC , Desh Bhagat University, Mr. Sumit Bahl, JD Rayat-Bahra University, Mr. Anshu Kataria, Aryan Group of Colleges, Dr. D S Cheema, Deputy Director, Chandigarh University, Dr. Suresh, Rayat-Bahra University, Mr. Manjit Singh, Doaba Group of Colleges and other officials.The meeting was also attended by Mr. M P Singh, Principal Secretary Technical Education, Mr. Hussan Lal, Secretary Medical Education, Mr. A Venu Prasad, Secretary Higher Education, Mr Vivek Partap Singh, Secretary Vigilance, Mr. B Purusharatha , Director Technical Education and other concerned Government officials.