Over Rs 100 crore of scholarship amount of colleges in Nagpur pending with government

Over Rs 100 crore of scholarship amount of colleges in Nagpur pending with government

By Vikas Vaidya

Most of the private colleges in Maharashtra State are suffering heavily as Maharashtra Government is not clearing the scholarship amount of over Rs 750 crore. The colleges in Nagpur are waiting to get clear the dues of over Rs 100 crore. Though, Shivajirao Moghe, Maharashtra’s Minister for Social Justice always throw the ball in the court of finance department, this time he is very positive as far as disbersing the amount. He has got Rs 50 crore sanctioned from the Finance Department, but still it did not solve the issue of pendency.
The demand being made by the colleges and from other sectors also to have some income limit for the students of reserved categories which presently is missing.
Earlier Moghe had taken stand of colleges opening accounts of the students and amount need to be deposited to their accounts. Government of Maharashtra had implemented a scheme for payment of scholarship/freeship to students belonging to backward classes (SC, ST, OBC, VJ, NT, SBC, etc). The Government of Maharashtra reimburses tuition fees through Social Justice Department against all such students. The colleges have to bear either 100 per cent fees or some part of it for these 80 per cent backward class students.
Sources disclosed that over Rs 7 crore of SC scholarship, Rs 25.5 crore of SC freeship, Rs 19 crore of VJNT scholarship, Rs 4 crore of VJNT freeship, Rs 49 crore of OBC scholarship, Rs 14 crore of OBC freeship and Rs 10 crore of SBC scholarship are pending
Social Justice Department should pay 90 per cent of tuition fees/scholarship/freeship to institutions by June of every academic year before commencement of academic session. But this year, not a single penny is paid due to which many colleges are facing financial crunch. The dues with the Government vary from Rs 80 lakh to Rs 5 crore to be paid to colleges.
Barring few big colleges, other colleges are facing the fear of closure. In fact some of the colleges are planning to sale the colleges to big houses. This year no organisation applied for new engineering college or MBA college. In fact many of them applied for closure for some of the branches. The amount pending is differ from college to college but it ranges from almost Rs one crore to five crore. Every year, over 30 per cent seats in engineering colleges remained vacant. It has put additional financial burden on these colleges. Be it infrastructure development, library, various facilities, advancement, organising various conferences, seminars, all this needs money.
Panic has gripped managements of many college as they have obtained loans from banks and are dependent on dues to be received from the Government. Because of fear of not filling up the seats even cut-throat competition has come up. if this situation persists then quality will go down. Colleges may stop taking services from expert teachers whom they have to pay more. Already half of colleges do not have full-time teachers and Principals.