Bhubaneswar: The Kalinga Sikhya Sathi Yojana and e-Medhabruti schemes, aimed at providing financial assistance to meritorious students of underprivileged sections for pursuing higher education, have failed to achieve the targets set for 2019-20. This was revealed in an audit report of the Accountant General (AG).
The Kalinga Sikhya Sathi Yojana was launched to provide education loans at 1 per cent rate of interest to students for pursuing higher studies. Students of underprivileged sections are being provided `20,000 annually for pursuing both graduate and post-graduate courses.
The audit by AG found that the government has failed to meet the target set for the scheme for 2019-20. According to the report, the government was able to provide benefits of the scholarship scheme to 29 students only against the target of 500 students for the year 2019-20, a dismal 5.8 per cent achievement of the set target.
Similarly, the Higher Education department has failed to achieve the target set for e-Medhabruti scheme for the last financial year. E-Medhabruti is provided to students whose parental income doesn’t exceed `6 lakh per annum. The scholarship is provided to Plus III (senior merit), PG merit and technical/professional courses at the rate of `5,000, `10,000 and `10,000 respectively. According to sources, the government had set a target of covering 10,000 technical and professional students under e-Medhabruti scheme on merit basis. However, the achievement was only 1,783, a shortfall of 82.17 per cent of the target.
“The achievement of physical and financial target under technical and professional category was dismal and the shortfall was 82.17 per cent defeating the very purpose of the scheme thereby depriving the meritorious students to meet a part of their education expenses while pursuing their higher studies,” the auditor noted.
It has asked the Higher Education department to remove the bottlenecks and deficiencies in achieving the target for the larger benefit of the needy students.