THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: In a big relief for MBBS students belonging to BPL category, the Health Department has decided to introduce a scholarship scheme and a corpus fund that will cover their annual fees. The scholarship is meant for those students studying at self-financing colleges from the 2017-18 academic year.
Briefing about the new scheme, Health Minister K K Shylaja said in order to ensure the scholarship reaches eligible persons, a guideline has also been released.“The scholarship is meant for those brilliant students who are financially backward,” said Shylaja. According to the minister, in order to provide fees to those BPL students who secured merit-based admission at self-financing colleges, it has also been decided to create a corpus fund under the Admission and Fee Regulatory Committee.
“Other than that of transferring the fund collected from NRI students in the previous academic year towards the newly created corpus fund, the government’s share will also be included in it,” said Shylaja.
It is said NRIs, as well as associations, organisations and even the public, can send their contributions towards the corpus fund. At the same time, an officer with the Health Department said it will be only those students who are children of those employed with 32 sectors (such as daily wage labour, farming, traditional fishing, construction work, tailoring, plantation sector and others) who will be eligible for the scholarship.
“In addition to this, it has also been clearly specified that those who own land above one acre and have a monthly income above Rs 25,000 will be excluded from availing the scholarship,” said the officer.