No Minority Scholarship Notifications Issued in Past 2 Years: Report
University Grants Commission has not released the notification for the Maulana Azad National Fellowship - MANF and National Fellowship for Scheduled Caste students. It has been lying pending for the past two years due to which more than 1500 fellowships have lapsed.
The University Grants Commission (UGC) has not published the notifications for the Maulana Azad National Fellowship - MANF and National Fellowship for Scheduled Caste students. UGC has not released the fellowship in the last two years.
The delay in the fellowship is because of the new guidelines, which were expected to come out following which it is likely that the commission will release 2018-2019 notification for fellowships very soon.
The selection process for the last two years was done in 2016-17 itself. The ministry has issued new guidelines for the selection procedure that has been sent to the UGC and an approval is awaited now.
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One of the officials also informed that the scholarship slots have gone up from 756 to 1,000 for this academic year.
Meanwhile, a UGC official informed that the notification for both National Fellowship for Scheduled Caste and Maulana Azad National Fellowship students will be released within the two weeks.
Last year, Ministry of Minority Affairs decided to make NET as the basic eligibility criteria for Maulana Azad National Fellowship. The UGC halted the issue of notifications as they did not know how to follow the new eligibility criteria.
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More than 1500 scholarships have lapsed in the past two years and if the same scenario continues another 1000 scholarship will get lapsed in the current academic year as well. Some of the officials are of the view that the delay in the release of notification is due to the lack of proper planning.
Inputs from NDTV