Students will have to no longer apply for scholarships once the Maharashtra government higher and technical education department’s integrated system to automatically source admission data for scholarship gets functional. The department is developing the system to benefit students seeking support under various higher education scholarships.
Under the integrated process, documents submitted at the time of admissions will be automatically directed toward Maha DBT portal, an online system for scholarship disbursement. While a lot of details submitted at the time of admission and to avail scholarship are similar, the higher and technical education department is working to identify gaps so that new heads can be added to fill data at the time of admission.
On October 29, state Higher and Technical Education Minister Chandrakant Patil announced the plan, scheduled to be operational from the next academic year. It is also expected to ensure speedy disbursement of scholarship amounts to eligible students.
Explaining the new system, a senior official from the Directorate of Technical Education (DTE), said, “Students already submit all required documents at the time of admission. But to avail of scholarship, students had to apply separately and submit the same documents again. After the process, which takes time, it would take a few months for scholarship disbursement. In an integrated process, this delay will be completely avoided.”
While this integration will help at the first year of the course, the student proceeding to next year will have to submit only previous year’s result and record of attendance to continue availing of the scholarship.
State government offers various scholarships, as well as fee waivers for students under various schemes. Apart from caste-based benefits availed by students coming from Scheduled Caste (SC), Scheduled Tribe (ST), Other Backward Classes (OBC), Economically Weaker Section (EWS), and Socially and Economically Backward Class (SEBC), there are schemes for students from minority communities, complete fee-reimbursement for girls studying professional courses in state, those with less than `8lakh family income, among others.
The official said, “Considering various schemes, nearly to 70 per cent students admitted every year are taking benefit of some or the other scholarship or fee-waiver extended by the state government, amounting to an annual expenditure of around `8,000crore. While budgetary allocations are already made for this, all eligible candidates are bound to get the benefits. But an integration of process will ensure that there is no duplication of efforts and disbursement can start immediately as the academic year begins.”
