2,000 backward class students' fees unpaid as social welfare department keeps waiting for university to forward applications

For the past few days, district social welfare officer Bharat Shinde has been a harassed man. He has been receiving delegations of backward class students from the University of Pune (UoP)u00a0-- besides visits from their organisations and parentsu00a0-- demanding to know why the fees of students have not been transferred for a year. Students belonging to various backward classes, such as SC, ST, NT and OBC, among others, are entitled to free education and the payment of their fees is done by the state government through the social welfare department, said Shinde. The process requires the college or university where a student is registered to send a list of students along with the fees and bank account details, and the money is directly deposited in a student's account.


Slow going? The University of Pune is supposed to send the scholarship
applications for backward class students, whose fees are paid by the
state government. File pic

According to Shinde, despite several reminders, the UoP has not sent the application for scholarships and details of students. "We can't dispense any money on our own; the university is yet to send us an application for dispensing scholarship amount and other details. We have the year-end closing on March 31, and before that we sent them several reminders. I have all documentary proof, but they didn't respond," said Shinde. "Recently some student organisations came to our office along with parents, protesting that our department was slow, but the fact is that we didn't get any requests."