25% seats for general students in SC/ST schools

PATNA: The state government has decided to start at least one residential school for the SC/ST students in every subdivision. It has also reserved 25% seats in the existing as well as new such schools for the general category students from rural areas with BPL background.
The schools, on the lines of Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas, will be English medium with CBSE curriculum. “While presenting the state government’s report card on November 25, CM Jitan Ram Manjhi had announced that the students’ strength in SC/ST residential schools will be increased to one lakh.Besides the SC/ST students, 25,000 general category students will also get the same facilities at these schools,” SC and ST welfare department secretary S M Raju said on Thursday.
Raju said work on building infrastructure for the new schools will start as soon as the proposal gets cabinet nod. The additions in the existing schools will be complete in the next two years. “The schools will also act as a crucible for SC/ST and general students who can share their culture and values. Since most of these schools are managed by general category people, they will become direct stakeholders if their own kids study there,” he said adding the criteria for admitting general students apart from a test will be that they should have rural background and belong to a BPL family.
The department is also making arrangements for accepting online applications from the students for scholarships. “We have received many complaints of delay in pre-matriculation and matriculation scholarships for which we are introducing online applications. The monitoring of the technical institutes will also be done online,” Raju said.
He said out of the 131 technical institutes scrutinized by the department, six were found fake. They are IAM Learning Institute, Singrauli, Madhya Pradesh, Deva Engineering College, Koderma, Jharkhand, Academy Centre, Delhi, Info City Centre, Delhi, Rajiv Gandhi Technology College, Bhopal, and CT Waris Institute, Hyderabad. There were about 160 students in these institutes who were getting scholarships.
Eight regional radio centres in local languages, including Bhojpuri, Maithili, etc will soon be started and radio sets have already been distributed among about 17 lakh Mahadalit families. Listing out other programmes of the department, Raju said a 100-bed girls’ hostel and 200-bed boys’ hostel for the SC/ST students will be set up in every district. About one lakh SC/ST youngsters will also be imparted skill development training next year.