Aadhaar-based portal to bring all scholarships under one roof

The state government has developed an Aadhaar-enabled digital platform to integrate various scholarship schemes with which it wants to achieve a ‘one student, one scholarship’ policy by plugging leakage.

The system will have a common application allowing students apply for a scholarship online, without having to visit government departments. More importantly, the system will ensure students receive scholarships in time, Additional Chief Secretary T M Vijay Bhaskar said.

“Various departments offer scholarships to students right from Class 1 all the way up to higher education. Right now, students manually send applications to their institutions, because of which, in many cases, they receive scholarships very late in the academic year. So, we want to bring all government-funded scholarships in one place, with which they will be made available in the month of August,” Bhaskar told DH.

The move is in line with the government’s decision to ensure one student receives only one scholarship.

“An Aadhaar-enabled payments system will ensure scholarships are remitted directly to the students’ bank accounts. We had cases
where amounts were being sent to different accounts, which will stop,” Bhaskar explained.

“It’s a massive exercise,” Backward Classes Welfare secretary Mohammad Mohsin said. “Presently, our department provides scholarships through the National Scholarships Portal, but others don’t. I only hope the common application system will be able to handle the load.”

Scholarships are broadly classified as pre-matric and post-matric. According to data from the Chief Minister’s Office, about 1.47 crore students receive scholarships under Social Welfare, Backward Classes Welfare, Minority Welfare and Higher Education departments.

The common applications system will be linked with the Student Achievement Tracking System run by the Education Department, which has details of every schoolgoing child in the state.

“Hence, for pre-matric scholarships, all that a school headmaster needs to do is key in the student’s name and, the details will be retrieved automatically. As a result, there will be no delays,” Bhaskar said.

The Department of e-Governance has developed the new system, which is being tested. The government wants to make the system available this academic year itself. The state has also asked the Union Ministry of Minority Affairs to consider linking their software with this.