Don’t deposit amount in students’ accounts till you find the solution: HC tells Govt

By Vikas Vaidya

Bombay High Court on Monday has given an ultimatum to Maharashtra Government to not to deposit any money of scholarship in students’ accounts under Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) scheme till it finds the proper solution to this issue. The division bench of Justice Bhushan Gavai and Justice Bharati Dangre has come heavily on the Government for acting casually on this important issue.
While implementing DBT, Government forgot to give a thought to the aspect of transfer of the amount deposited in students’ accounts to the colleges’ ones.  During the issuance of GR regarding DBT, most of the colleges had expressed fear that students would elope with the amount but it fell on deaf ears of Social Justice Department. The process of DBT delayed by one year. It was announced in the year 2017. Now finally Government deposited the amount of scholarship in the accounts of students but colleges had a hard time to get transferred that amount to their accounts. Still the colleges could manage only 30 per cent of the students turning up to them. A large percentage of the students denied of receipt of any scholarship amount.
To add to the problems of colleges, some amount of this scholarship to be deposited in the accounts of the students bounced back. The reason behind it was for this DBT, the students were supposed to open their own accounts in the banks. Most of the students came from poor background so they had to open zero balance accounts. The banks made it clear that these students would not get cheque book. Also, these students would have amount limit for withdrawing and depositing.
In the wake of all these problems finally colleges knocked the doors of High Court which heard the arguments and came out with the above order. High Court pointed out that there is a much delay on the part of Government for disbursing the amount which they should have given by August 2017.
Colleges made lot of efforts on their part as the delegation of engineering colleges had met Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, last year in December at Nagpur. He had promised that the 60 per cent of the total dues would be given to colleges directly. A GR in that regard was issued on December 8. He fulfilled the promise and the amount was transfered that never reached the colleges. According to experts probably the scheme was not implemented with a proper thought and mechanism.
Some days ago Division Bench of Justice Bhushan Gavai and Justice B P Colabawala had delivered the judgement through which it had empowered colleges to cancel the admission of students if they don’t transfer the money in the accounts of colleges.
High Court is continuously hammering Government on this issue. In March in a case filed by Sinhgarh colleges High Court had asked Government to deposit Rs 117 crore which was due since long.
It is ridiculous that latest GR by Department of Social Justice clearly says that the responsibility of recovering the scholarship amount from the students purely lies on the colleges.
Earlier colleges used to get the tuition fee amount of students against the scholarship in their accounts. As per the GR of 2008, the colleges were supposed to receive 90% of the reimbursement of fees to be paid by the Government for reserved category students, by the first month of the academic session. That never took place. But the problem was never so bad like it is now.