INVC NEWS
Chandigarh,
Paramjit Singh Kainth, President of the National Scheduled Castes Alliance, a socio-political organization aimed at empowerment of the Scheduled Castes community in Punjab, today criticized the Congress government on their disappointed reaction towards the new revised guidelines of the Post-Matric Scholarship in Punjab by the central government.
“Instead of taking up the responsibility of providing for lakhs of scheduled castes community students under the post-matric scholarship scheme, the government yesterday clearly tried to absolve itself from the matter citing that the central government is the only sole provider and also gave up its responsibility saying the financial burden would be too much for the State treasury. This attitude of the State government towards the future’s of lakhs of sc students in the state is dispiriting and disappointing to say the least.” Said Kainth.
Kainth further said “June and July are months which are crucial for a student and the recent statement of Capt. Amrinder Singh seems to show that he is ready to gamble with the future of these students. This government since coming to power has been a failure in dealing with issues plaguing the scheduled castes community in the state. It has been unable to convince the centre to release Rs. 1500 crore under the Post matric scholarship since the last year.”
Kainth lamented at the dismal situation of the SC’s in the state saying “The State government has money to celebrate festivals, birthdays and initiate projects which are ceremonial at best but the same government puts up a white flag of financial strain when the issue is relating empowerment and development of the Scheduled Castes in the State.”
He demanded that the Congress government should clear its stand over the issue and if it is unable to convince the centre to release the money under the scheme, the government should create a separate corpus out of the contingency fund of the state to provide for the lakhs of students suffering due to the government’s ignorance.
National Scheduled Castes Alliance further lamented on the poor performance of Sadhu Singh Dharamsot as the minister and attributed his inability to govern as the main reason for his failure reign. “He was responsible for getting the money allocated from the centre for the scheme and he has been a failure in that too. The Congress government should constitute a special committee to resolve this issue as early as possible as millions of lives are at stake and their academic futures.” Said Kainth.
