These schemes were started after Chief Minister Nitish Kumar came to power in Bihar to boost student enrollment rate and Nitish almost never fails to mention them in his public addresses
Even as academic session 2016-17 is set to end this week, government schools students in Bihar have not yet received the allowances disbursed to them under various welfare schemes run by the state government.
The revelations were made by the Opposition BJP in Bihar legislative council on Monday, which brought an adjournment motion over the issue.
The Bihar government runs four welfare schemes like Cycle Yojana for Class 9, Poshak Yojana for Class 1 to 12, pre-matric scholarship for SC/ST, backward class and lower income group general category students (Class 1 to 10) and sanitary napkin scheme for girls (Class 8 to 12). These schemes were started after Chief Minister Nitish Kumar came to power in Bihar to boost student enrollment rate and Nitish almost never fails to mention them in his public addresses.
"However, in 2016-17, not a single beneficiary student has received any money under these schemes," said Sushil Kumar Modi, leaders of Opposition in Bihar legislative council. "About 2.5 crore students in Bihar are covered under the four aforementioned schemes, which cost about Rs 3,000 crore to the state exchequer."
Citing an example of pre-matric scholarship scheme, which forms a major chunk of out of the four, Modi said, "In 2015-16, Rs 2,253 crore was disbursed to students. For 2016-17, Rs 1,700 crore was sent to the districts in February this year, though none of it has reached the students yet."
The scholarship money is to be directly transferred to the bank account of students after they submit a compliance certificate of 75% attendance.
Modi alleged that in 2015-16, when Bihar assembly polls were due in October, the Nitish government had not just done away with the 75% rider, but also disbursed all funds in July-August itself and in cash. "And now the academic as well as financial year will end in the next four days. The government has deprived the students for an entire year and it should tell how will it reach the students in so few days," he said.
Bihar education minister Ashok Choudhary, who was also present in the house, did not make any comment on the matter.
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