Scholarship portal glitch mars students’ hopes

HYDERABAD: Tens of thousands of students from the weaker sections of society in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh could lose a chance to avail the government of India’s pre-matric scholarship due to glitches in the National Scholarships Portal (NSP), lack of coordination between banks and the district administration and an inordinate delay in issuing the scholarship notification.The deadline of July 31 has only made matters worse.
The Centre has earmarked 66,767 scholarships (of Rs 1,000 to Rs 5,000) to Telangana and 61,381 to Andhra Pradesh. Of the total number of scholarships for Telangana, 59,689 have been allocated to Muslims. Similarly, 48,543 scholarships have been earmarked for Muslims in Andhra Pradesh.
The remaining are for Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains and Parsis.
According to students’ activists, students are required to upload their details on the NSP website, which is maintained by the ministry of communication and information technology. But, worried students claim that despite following all the steps, an error message pops up indicating a failure in uploading documents. In fact, the state-wise abstract report shows that of the 1,526 applicants from Telangana, only 81 have been able to actually submit their applications. Similarly, though 1,828 registrations have been received in Andhra Pradesh, only 167 could submit their applications.
“My father tried a lot of times to upload the forms and documents but the website was not accepting it. As NSP does not have a helpline, we took the help of an NGO to upload the forms. The NGO too, faced the same problem,” said Mehreen Sultana, a student of Class IX from Ashraful Madaris School.
Afreen Begum, another student from the same school, said, “Scholarships are very important for us. If we don’t get funds, we can lose a precious year. We don’t want to risk that.”
In an effort to reach out to the ministry of minority affairs, Grass Roots Action and Information Network (GRAIN), an NGO, wrote to both the Union minister for minority affairs Najma Heptullah and minister of state for minority affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi to seek their stand on the issue. The NGO also sought their intervention. “We have called the offices of both the ministers but did not get any satisfactory response. Najma Heptulla’s office asked us to contact Naqvi’s office. But there was no response from there,” said Ali Asghar of GRAIN.
The lethargic attitude of the Telangana minorities welfare department has added to the problem, activists said. While the ministry of minority affairs had asked the government to make the last week of April as the deadline to issue notifications to the press, the Telangana government did so on July 5. This has led to students losing precious time.
Further, with nationalised banks such as the State Bank of Hyderabad (SBH) facing staff crunch, students are facing difficulties in opening “No Frills Accounts”, also known as “Zero Balance Accounts”.
According to a highly-placed SBH source, there has been a lack of coordination between the district administration and banks. “We have sent across instructions to branches to open these accounts for students. We have also been busy with opening accounts for the PM’s Jan Dhan Yojna and Aasara, among others. Efforts at better coordination will be stepped up,” the source said.