BHUBANESWAR: Amid confusion over courses and streams excluded from the recently-launched Gyanodaya-Shikshya Ru Samruddhi free education scheme and some schools and colleges reportedly continuing to collect fees from students, the government on Saturday said it will issue a fresh direction to the eligible institutions not to do so.
Higher Education minister Suryabanshi Suraj said an SOP will be issued shortly to streamline the admission process under the scheme. He, however, clarified that professional and self-financing courses were not included in the scheme.
The reaction came after reports of higher secondary schools and degree colleges charging fees from the students in the ongoing admission process surfaced. Some colleges also allegedly collected fee of around Rs 5,000 from students as ‘other fees’ in the absence of an SOP.
Sharing details, a senior official of the DHE told this paper that the state government has already made it clear that professional courses and self-finance courses such BEd, MEd or any other professional and self-financing courses have not been included in the scheme as the main objective of the programme is to offer free education in regular and traditional courses and encourage students, belonging to financially-poor families, to continue their higher education.
“While an order has already been sent to government and aided colleges for implementation of the scheme from the current (2026-27) academic session, it has come to notice that some aided-institutions are confused over its implementation and are charing fee from the students. The colleges will be instructed not to collect any fee from any student. The fees already paid will also be refunded,” he said.