Punjab Government has decided in principal that “Shaguns” to SC/BC girls will be provided 15 days before their marriages from January 2015. This major decision was taken by Punjab Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal in a meeting with senior officers of social security, finance and social welfare department held here today.Badal has asked the secretary social welfare Mrs. Seema Jain to simplify the procedure with self attestation of documents to avail benefits in hassle free manner under shagun scheme. To check duplicity of beneficiaries Mr. Badal advised the department to cross check beneficiaries randomly and if any illegality was established than recipient would be liable to pay the double penalty and further punitive action.Reviewing the ongoing welfare schemes for students belongs to SC/BC and minorities in the state, Deputy Chief Minister has asked the officers to organize a meeting with Education Department and issue instructions to all heads of educational institutes to make sure that all scholarship cases must be sent within time to provide financial help under post-matric and pre-matric schemes.
Besides, he also directed the department to popularize the scholarship schemes through an advertisement campaign within next 15 days.Giving details Mrs. Seema Jain informed Deputy CM that Rs. 394 crore have already been released to 5,92,523 SC/BC students from the year 2009-14 under post-matric scheme and all scholarships were disbursed upto 2014. Under pre-matric scholarship scheme Rs. 42.68 crore were also distributed to 1,89,705 SC students in 2014-15. Besides, department has received Rs. 376 crore under this scheme for 2014-15.It may be mentioned here that to get registration for scholarships Punjab Government web portal was a huge hit as number of beneficiaries have increased to 3.05 lakh as compare to last year. Deputy Chief Minister asked the department to remove the upfront payment for BC students to avail the benefit under this scheme.
Taking a serious note of non-deposition of utilization certificates (UCs) by the departments in some cases, Mr. Badal asked the officers concerned to ensure UCs to be deposited in next week.Deputy Chief Minister said Punjab Government would raise the issue with ministry of social justice and empowerment to include Punjab under the “Pardhan Mantri Adarsh Gram Yojna (PMAGY) under which 1000 villages would be developed having 50 % or more SC population. He said that Punjab has the highest SC population (31.94%) in the country and Punjab must be included in this scheme along with Assam, Bihar, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan and Tamilnadu. It may be mentioned here that 2800 villages (23.01%) in the state have more than 50 % SC population.Prominent among others present in the meeting included Principal Secretary to Deputy CM Mr. P.S. Aujla, Secretary Social Welfare Mrs. Seema Jain, Director Social Security Mrs Alak Nanda Dyal, Secretary Expenditure Mr Jaspal Singh, Special Principal Secretaries to Deputy CM Mr Manvesh Singh Sidhu and Ajay Mahajan.