New Delhi: The Union Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment has issued provisional scholarship awards to less than half of those selected, or just 40 of the 106 candidates selected for its National Overseas Scholarship (NOS) for the forthcoming academic year, 2025-26. It has said that letters for the remaining 66 candidates “may be issued… subject to availability of funds”, as per a report in The Hindustan Times.
The ministry has said it has not got clearance from Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs. This cabinet committee is chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The newspaper has cited an announcement made by the Modi government on July 1 as saying that “Provisional award letters to the remaining candidates (from serial number 41 to 106) in the selected list may be issued in due course, subject to availability of funds.”
The NOS programme was instituted in 1954-55. It provides financial support to students from Scheduled Castes (SC), Denotified Nomadic Tribes (DNT), semi-nomadic tribes, landless agricultural labourers, or traditional artisan categories, with a family income under Rs 8 lakh per annum.
Usually, all selected students have received provisional scholarship letters, but this year the ministry has sent out letters in what it is suggesting is a phased manner dependent on availability of funds, This, reports the newspaper, has left “students in a lurch.”
The ministry has bounced off the matter of paucity of funds to a cabinet committee.
“It is an issue with the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs not approving the money allocated to these scholarship schemes. We have the money, but we also need the green signal from above to give it out,” an official of the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment is quoted as telling The Hindustan Times.
This story was originally published in thewire.in. Read the full story here.
