2,000 backward class students' fees unpaid as social welfare department keeps waiting for university to forward applications
2,000 backward class students' fees unpaid as social welfare department keeps waiting for university to forward applications
For the past few days, district social welfare officer Bharat Shinde has been a harassed man. He has been receiving delegations of backward class students from the University of Pune (UoP)u00a0-- besides visits from their organisations and parentsu00a0-- demanding to know why the fees of students have not been transferred for a year. Students belonging to various backward classes, such as SC, ST, NT and OBC, among others, are entitled to free education and the payment of their fees is done by the state government through the social welfare department, said Shinde. The process requires the college or university where a student is registered to send a list of students along with the fees and bank account details, and the money is directly deposited in a student's account.
Slow going? The University of Pune is supposed to send the scholarship
applications for backward class students, whose fees are paid by the
state government. File pic
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According to Shinde, despite several reminders, the UoP has not sent the application for scholarships and details of students. "We can't dispense any money on our own; the university is yet to send us an application for dispensing scholarship amount and other details. We have the year-end closing on March 31, and before that we sent them several reminders. I have all documentary proof, but they didn't respond," said Shinde. "Recently some student organisations came to our office along with parents, protesting that our department was slow, but the fact is that we didn't get any requests."
About 2000-odd students are affected by the delay, and though Shinde could not give an exact figure for the amount that is pending, sources in his office said it was more than Rs 45 lakh. The students concerned belong to various streams and courses such as engineering, medicine, law, PhD, masters programmes etc. According to Shinde, after student protests, the UoP did send a list of students and fees pending to the social welfare department, but the information was incomplete.
"It doesn't have bank details, which makes the information useless, as we can't do any bank transfers," said Ashok Malyamath, office superintendent at the social welfare department. Students said that they were worried about admissions to the next academic year as the previous year's fees was yet to be paid. "My family's financial condition is not so good and yet I came to the city to study as I want to get out of the rural set-up and make a career for myself. The fees for the last academic year is yet to be paid and I don't know if my family will be able to afford to pay up if there is any more delay and we have to bear the brunt of it," said a UoP mass communication student, requesting anonymity.
The Other Side
Despite repeated calls and text messages, Vice-Chancellor R K Shevgaonkar did not respond to queries on the pending scholarship amount. Even his secretary P V Kulkarni did not entertain any queries, despite repeated attempts.
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