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Journalism of Courage
Union Minister for Social Justice and Empowerment, Dr Virendra Kumar on Wednesday told the Rajya Sabha that the pre-matric scholarship has now been limited to classes 9 and 10 in government schools only under the OBC category.
“Only students studying in classes 9 and 10 are covered under the pre-matric scholarship scheme for OBC,” the minister said in the upper hour of the Parliament while responding to a question by MP John Brittas.
This has been done to rationalise the scholarship as per Right to Education (RTE) Act, 2009 under which it is obligatory for the government to provide free and compulsory elementary education up to class 8 to each and every child.
The government has increased the amount of scholarships and made it uniform for day scholars and hostellers. Around 5.67 crore students are likely to be benefitted from the scheme in the period of five years.
The union minister also gave the figures of the last three years’ beneficiaries. In the year 2021-22, there were 34.43 lakh beneficiaries, in the year 2020-21 there were 166.20 lakh beneficiaries and in 2019-20 there were 94.52 beneficiaries.
The discontinuation of the pre-matric scholarship for students of minority communities studying in classes 1 to 8, drew flax from the opposition.
