A delegation of Students Islamic Organisation of India (SIO) headed by SIO National Secretary Shahnawaz Ali Raihan on October 27 visited the Ministry of Minority Affairs office. The delegation shared thoughts with bureaucrats in the ministry regarding making Minorities Scholarship schemes more outreaching and hassle-free. SIO Jharkhand State President Shariq Ansar shared his experience on how SIO played a major role throughout Jharkhand to make students aware of this programme and what kind of hurdles they faced. Later the delegation conveyed a letter to the Minority Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid. The delegation appreciated the scholarship programme by saying this is indeed a good step to eliminate educational backwardness of minorities in India who have had been deprived of their rights over the period of time.
Though being a positive and sincere step, the scheme to an extent has not been successful in reaching the deserving rural and urban candidates of the country. On the very first year of its inception, it went unnoticed as the scheme was not advertised by the state authorities. In Maharashtra, Bihar, Jharkhand and also in various states SIO pressed the state governments to postpone the deadline by a month and also advertise it in all the newspapers widely read by the minorities. Apart from this, there are many hassles and procedures, at the local level, attached to it to which a common student can surely not sustain and get through the scheme.
The candidates have to face great hardship in getting the income certificate, at times in some colleges the administration does not know about the scheme or they refuse to accept the forms only because they did not receive any GR on it. On the other hand the pre-condition of opening a bank account has also been a major reason of students not being benefited from the scheme. There have been reports that scores of scholarships elapse because the authorities fail to publicise it on large scale.
SIO has been instrumental in propagating the scheme among the minorities throughout the country. After working on the scheme for the past three years, experiencing different odd scenario, understanding the need of candidates, the response and feedback SIO believes that there are certain things which if changed can make the scholarship scheme a great success.
Therefore, on behalf of the minorities, especially the Muslim community, SIO suggested and presented demands to make the scheme more outreaching, viable and hassle-free.