Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee President and Member of Parliament from Gurdaspur Sunil Jakhar said that Modi Government of center once again exposed its anti Schedule Cast (SC) face by not releasing Rs 1287 crores of ‘Post Metric SC Scholarship Scheme’ of last two year to Punjab.Mr. Jakhar was speaking to media person while protesting against Union Government on the issue of SC Scholarship outside the Parliament House New Delhi today. On this occasion Member Parliaments from both houses Mrs. Ambika Soni, Mr. Partap Singh Bajwa, Mr. Santokh Chaudhary, Mr. Gurjit Singh Aujla and Mr. Ravneet Singh Bittu were also present.Sunil Jakhar said that Post Matric SC Scholarship Scheme for the students of the Schedule casts was promoted by the Manmohan Singh government and under this scheme children of those SC families can avail scholarship for their post metric studies whose annual family income is below 2.5 lacks. He said that the Congress government boosted this scheme with the objective that every poor student could be able to contribute in the development of the country by taking higher education. But since the 2014, when Modi government had come in power at center, it was creating hindrances in the release of scholarship amount to states as per its hidden anti-poor agenda.
He said that union government is not releasing pending amount of Rs 1297.02 crores to state of SC Scholarship without any reason and further now it want to put the burden of 780 crores from it to state treasury which is total injustice with the debt ridden states as after the faulty GST system launched by the Modi government, the states have only limited economic resources to run their business. He asked Union Government to continue the scheme same as it was launched by Congress Government so that its benefit could be transferred to needy students which ultimately will uplift the socio-economic status of the weaker sections of the society.PPPC president further said that on one hand Prime Minister Narinder Modi was regularly giving thrust on education of weaker section in his ‘man ki baat’ while on other hand his government is not releasing scholarship amount for poor students since last two years. He said that not only this, the central government has made a more serious change in this scheme. “According to new guidelines of Union Government Students have to pay tuition fee to institute at admission and later on GoI will issue scholarship to student but actually student have no money to pay fee in advance without scholarship,” he added. He said that due to this reason many students are forced to leave their study whereas earlier scholarship was paid to institute and institutions were bound to give admission without tuition fee.Mr. Jakhar said that actually the Modi government does not want that poor people could uplift their lives with education. He said that policies of Modi Government are totally anti-SC. On this occasion, he demanded from the Modi government that the remaining 1287 crore of outstanding dues of the last two years of Punjab must be released immediately.