New Delhi: According to the official statement from the Ministry of Minority Affairs, more than 1,16,000 scholarships have been awarded under the merit-cum-means scholarship scheme, which was launched in 2007. The scheme was implemented by the Ministry through State Governments and Union territory administrations.
The merit-cum-means scheme is managed and run by the Central Government and the scholarships are provided in order to pursuing professional and technical programmes at the Undergraduate (UG) and Postgraduate (PG) level at various institutions, which are accepted by the proper authority of this scheme. However, the scheme is among those three schemes, which had been adopted by the Ministry of Minority Affairs functions under the Prime Minister's New 15 Point Programme for the Welfare of Minorities.
As per the statement, almost 30% of the total scholarships, which have been awarded, are assigned to girl students. However, they can be used by the boy students as well, in the case where required numbers of girl students are not available. Moreover, during the 11th five year plan (2007-12), Rs 600 crore had been allotted to the scheme. In comparison, Rs 135 crore has been sanctioned for the scheme in the current financial year (2010-2011).
The Government has set a target of the merit-cum-means scheme that is to distribute as many as 55,000 scholarships. According to the recent statistics (till December 21, 2010), the total number of scholarships have been awarded under the scheme is 1,16,367.
