For the first time, post-matric students belonging to Scheduled Caste (SC) communities will receive ‘e-freeship card’ from the government for the transfer of scholarship from this academic year. The card will act as a government guarantee to educational institutions towards payment of fee and the institutions have been asked not to insist on collecting fee from such students.
Educational institutions have been mandated to install facial recognition biometric system to capture the attendance of the students to ensure that scholarship money is well utilised. “Both the card and Aadhaar-based facial biometric system has been mandated by the Union government to be implemented from this academic year,” Additional Chief Secretary Rajveev Chawla told presspersons here on Thursday.
“The facility for students to apply for e-freeship card will be opened in the next eight to 10 days. While the State will fund the biometric facilities in government institutions, the biometric facility will have to be set up by private institutions with their own funds,” he added.
Separate desk
To provide convenience to students who are not tech savvy, every education institution has been mandated to set up a desk for state scholarship portal (SSP) and appoint a nodal officer to help generate e-freeship card. “If these facilities are not opened by institutions, students with their sensitive documents may end up in cyber centres, and chances of misuse becomes high,” e- Governance Department sources said.
As many as 65 universities, 14,000 colleges, 243 courses, and 2,516 course/combination across the State have been brought under the SSP portal. The unified portal has in all brought 1.25 crore pre-matric students and 40 lakh post-matric students in the State under it. While 6.62 lakh post-matric students from all the communities eligible for scholarship had applied for scholarship in 2019–2020, 13.72 lakh students had applied in 2020–21.
For the pre-matric scholarship disbursement, the State received 53.65 lakh application in 2018–2019, and 43.96 lakh and 36.99 lakh applications for 2019–20 and 2020–21, respectively.
Mr. Chawla said the entire process was paperless and money would go directly to the student’s account. The e-freeship card is being implemented on a pilot basis by the National Payment Corporation of India. Mr. Chawla said that though currently students belonging to SC communities would be brought under the new system, it could be eventually extended to all those students who were receiving government benefits.
Mr. Chawla said the Karnataka’s model had influenced the Union government to restructure the guidelines for post-matric scholarship. The departments of Social Justice and Tribal Welfare have taken inputs from the Karnataka model.
e-voucher proposed
Meanwhile, the Centre for e-Governance has proposed to the Karnataka government to implement ‘e-vouchers’ for students receiving scholarship. The UPI pre-paid e-vouchers that will be given to students in lieu of money can be encashed only by the college in which the student is studying. “The e-vouchers will prevent misuse of money and can be used at a particular institution for a particular purpose,” said Mr. Chawla.
