MDK Girls’ College Students urge government to release scholarship

A Correspondent

Dibrugarh: Despite the Central Government claiming to have dished out an extra special treatment to the northeastern region, the complaints of a group of students from MDK Girls’ College regarding the non-receipt of the scholarship amount under Ishan Uday Scholarship for which they were selected during the session 2017-18, have left a lot of people of the town apprehensive and skeptical about the sincerity of such scholarships aimed at reducing the rich-poor divide.

As told to The Sentinel, the students, despite having corrected their bank details that they entered wrong initially, did not get any amount of the scholarship thus far, even after reaching their fifth semester. When they initially contacted the National Scholarship Portal (NSP) in search of a solution to the irregularity on its part, they were told to contact at the ministry level, which again directed the poor and naive students to the former saying that the matter fell under the domain of UGC-NSP.

Apparently the students, who are already in their fifth semester and are likely to graduate in May 2020, became the scapegoats of a convenient game of passing the buck being played between the NSP and the ministry level, which deprived them of something they had earned on the based on their merit. They even contacted the joint secretary and assistant secretary of the UGC, but are still awaiting convincing replies. Shocked at such an indifferent attitude, the students decided to write to several high-level offices and departments, including the office of the Prime Minister.

The most immediate concern of theirs was the fact that the renewal notice regarding the scholarship was issued by the authorities, whereas the students are yet to receive any of the previous dues. However, upon being assured by the authority concerned that their issues would get resolved after they did the renewal, they had decided to do the same. Nonetheless, they told The Sentinel that if things did not change even after they carried out the renewal, they would have no other option but to take legal recourse.

The students, through a press release, also requested the Prime Minister, Chief Minister and the Education Minister to look into the matter with urgency and take necessary action towards the disbursement of their scholarship amount. This acute irregularity, which made the students face a lot of mental harassment, besides forcing them to finance their own education against all monetary odds, casts serious doubt on the efficacy of such government initiatives.

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