Scholarships to be directly linked to bank accounts from March 1

All scholarships and fellowships are set to be credited directly into the bank accounts of the students of higher education from March 1.

The University Grants Commission (UGC) is in the last leg of its efforts to completely move from the manual processing of the students’ claims to online processing.

It is also going to implement the transfer of study grants into the bank accounts of the beneficiaries under the direct benefit transfer (DBT) programme, nearly two years after the government created a Public Finance Monitoring System (PFMS) seeking the UGC to get data of all beneficiaries uploaded on it.

With the uploading of the existing beneficiaries of the scholarships and fellowships at the PFMS, the commission is now in the process of moving it to a portal created with the partner bank, for direct transfer of the study grants to the students’ bank accounts.

The higher education regulator has been working to make the transfer of all study grants through direct benefit transfer  since the Centre decided to bring all universities, colleges and other higher educational institutions under the PFMS from April 1, 2015, for the timely release of funds to beneficiaries of scholarships and fellowships.

The UGC had also earmarked about 20% of its budget to the PFMS for the direct payment of students’ study grants as well as development grants to higher educational institutions.

However, the directive to the educational institutions for uploading data of the beneficiary students drew a cold response

As a large number of universities and colleges neither register themselves at the PFMS portal nor furnish beneficiaries’ data for more than a year, the commission went tough and stopped the release of funds earmarked for study grants to such institutions.