CHENNAI: The State Education department has not received Rs 4,474 crore from the Centre under various schemes in the last few years, according to Deputy Chief Minister O Panneerselvam.While submitting the budgetary demands for Tamil Nadu at the pre-budget meeting held in New Delhi on Thursday, he said many education schemes, including post-matric scholarship for SC/ST students had suffered as the State was denied central funds on the ground of exhausting the budgetary allocations.
“A sum of Rs 1,547 crore has been pending towards the post-matric scholarship scheme for Scheduled Castes and Rs 27 crore for Scheduled Tribes for over a year. The annual allocation is grossly inadequate and may at least be doubled this year,” said Panneerselvam, who represented the State at the meeting.
In addition to this, the Centre has to pay up arrears of Rs 1,312 crore for the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), the ‘education for all’ scheme which aims at providing basic education to children up to the age of 14 and Rs 1,588-crore dues towards the Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA) scheme, which is implemented to provide secondary grade education.“Funds under the SSA and RMSA schemes have not been allotted to the State though these projects have been approved by the Project Approval Board (PAB),” he added.