Nishikant Khajuria
JAMMU, Sept 15: A number of students from Jammu and Kashmir, duly selected by AICTE for higher education outside the State under Prime Minister’s Special Scholarship Scheme, have been denied admission by the allotted colleges.
Notwithstanding the completion of all formalities by the nominated students, some of the allotted colleges have allegedly refused to give them admission under the provision of two supernumerary seats for Jammu and Kashmir students without assigning any reason. While the affected students are running from pillar to post seeking to know the fate of their admission, the All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE), which was the nodal agency for Counseling of eligible candidates and allotment of colleges to them, is playing truant by maintaining a mysterious silence over the denial of admission.
Pertinent to mention here that the Prime Minister’s Special Scholarship Scheme was launched by the Government of India for students of Jammu and Kashmir who, after passing class XII or equivalent examination, secure admission in Government Colleges and other selected institutions outside the State. The scheme envisages providing 5000 fresh scholarships every year. Out of these, 4500 scholarships are meant for general degree courses (including Agriculture, Horticulture, Veterinary Science etc), 250 for Engineering and 250 for Medical studies. Under the scheme, Rs 30,000 per annum scholarship is provided for general degree course, while for the Engineering and Medical studies, the scholarship is Rs 1.25 lakh and Rs 3 lakh per annum, respectively.
This was for the first time that the State Government facilitated selection of the candidates under this Scheme. The competent authority, which is Department of Higher Education, Ministry of HRD, decided to award scholarships to eligible students admitted through a Centralized Counseling process, carried out by AICTE in first week of this month.
However, after the selected students approached the allotted colleges for admission as per the instruction of AICTE, they were allegedly told by the management of concerned institutions that there was no such provision of supernumerary seats for J&K.
“I was allotted Institute of Karnataka but the college authorities refused to admit me by claiming that they had not received any such instruction from the AICTE,” said K D Sharma, who was selected for Civil Engineering course.
Shocked over the refusal of admission, he approached the AICTE authorities who simply passed the buck to University Grant Commission (UGC), which also did not respond positively.
A number of other selected students, who also kept shuttling between AICTE and UGC after being denied admission by the allotted colleges, approached the Excelsior highlighting their grievance. Though exact number of such students could not be ascertained, they claimed that some candidates from Kashmir Valley have also been denied admission.
Prof P Bambroo of GGM Science College Jammu, who was dealing with the selection process, also confirmed that the Incharge Special Scholarship Scheme in GCET was neither responding to their phone calls nor email for the reasons best known to the officer.
The AICTE official also allegedly misguided some students during the counseling by refusing to allot them suitable colleges despite vacant seats there. The Government of India should initiate a high level probe into the errors committed by AICTE as well as the State Higher Education Department, which willfully ignored the Jammu students, said Kasturi Lal Gupta, a social activist and father of an aggrieved student.
As reported earlier, an apparent bid was made to discourage the students from Jammu region and deprive them of the scholarship by conducting counseling of the eligible candidates at Srinagar only. The counseling was held at S P College Srinagar for allotment of seats to more than 5000 students, majority of whom belonged to Jammu region.
When contacted, the Minister of State in PMO and Member of Parliament from Udhampur-Doda constituency, Dr Jitendra Singh said that if there was some representation against denial of admission by the allotted colleges under the Scheme, he would take up the matter with the Ministry of HRD for redressal of the grievance.
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