Christians would earn an additional benefit of around ₹3 crore when the minority scholarships would be redistributed among them and the Muslims based on their respective population.
The redistribution would see the total allocation for Muslims going down to ₹9.27 crore from the earlier ₹12.68 crore and that of all the Christian communities together going up to ₹6.41 crore from the earlier ₹3.16 crore.
Each year, the State government spends ₹15.81 crore on six scholarships covering 14,398 students belonging to the six minority communities, according to A. B. Moideen Kutty, Director, Directorate of Minority Welfare.
The disbursal of the minority merit-cum means scholarship scheme, which was later rechristened as C. H. Muhammad Koya Scholarship, and the one for professional courses like Chartered Accountancy and ICWA would have to be restructured with the Kerala High Court striking down the 80:20 ratio followed for the beneficiaries, the Muslims and the Latin and Converted Christians as in the case of CH Muhammad Koya Scholarship. The court also ordered that it shall be redistributed among all the minority communities on the basis of their population.
The CH scholarships has the highest budgetary allocation of Rs. 8 crore and maximum number of beneficiaries, 7000 girl students. It supported the girls of Muslims and Latin and Converted Christians during the graduate, post-graduate and professional courses by offering an annual aid of Rs. 5000, Rs. 6000 and Rs. 7000 each and Rs. 13,000 each for hosteliers. The scholarship amount, which was launched with an annual outlay of Rs. 10 crore in 2008, was slashed to Rs. 8 crore as there were not enough applicants during the initial years.
The scholarship for Chartered Accountancy has an outlay of Rs. 45 lakh and a beneficiary base of 300 students, sources said.
The Rs. 3.30 crore-Prof. Joseph Mundassery Scholarship for 2835 students who score full A Plus in SSLC and Plus Two courses, and distinction for UG and PG courses, the Rs. 60 lakh-APJ Abdul Kalam Scholarship for 990 students of technical courses, the Rs. 50 lakh-Mother Teresa scholarship for 333 students of para-medical and nursing courses are the other schemes of the Directorate, officials said.
The court order would see the scholarship share of Muslims shrinking to 58.67 per from the earlier 80 per cent. All Christian communities together would get nearly 40.6 per cent, against the earlier 20 per cent, which was allotted to Latin Catholic and Converted Christians. The other minority communities including Sikhs, Buddhists, Parsis and Jains, will be eligible for 0.73 per cent of the benefits.
While most of the Muslim community organisations were peeved at the High Court order and wanted the State government to appeal against the verdict, most of the Christian organisations hailed it and felt that justice was eventually delivered to them through the court decision.
The State government is treading a fine line in the socially sensitive issue of redistribution of scholarship and maintained that an appropriate decision would be taken after looking into the court verdict.
