The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA), in a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh, gave its approval to implement the Centrally-sponsored “National means-cum-merit Scholarship” scheme during the 11th Plan.

“The scheme’s objective is to award scholarship to meritorious students of economically weaker sections to arrest their dropout at Class VIII and to encourage them to continue into the secondary stage up to Class XII,” Finance Minister P Chidambaram told reporters after the meeting.

Scholarships

Under the scheme, each year at least one lakh scholarships of Rs 6,000 per year would be awarded to students at the beginning of the Standard IX and continued till the Standard XII. “Only students whose parental income from all sources is not more than Rs 1,50,000 will be eligible to avail of the scholarship.

The scholarship is meant for students studying in government, local body and government-aided schools,” Chidambaram said.

A selection test would be held at the state level for the students of Standard VIII to identify the scholarship winners.

First stage selection

This will be conducted along with the first stage selection test of the National Talent Search Examination conducted by state governments under guidance of NCERT.

To fund the scheme, a corpus of Rs 750 crore will be created with State Bank of India in 2008-09 and a similar amount would be added to the fund every year for the next three years, the minister added.

The yield from the fund will be used for the scheme.

The requirement of funds for creation of corpus during the 11th Plan would be Rs 3,000 crore, while the expenditure on scholarships during the period would be Rs 600 crore.