BHUBANESWAR: The state government has merged the ‘Mukhyamantri Medhabruti Yojana’ with the new Mukhyamantri Shikhya Puraskar Yojana and issued fresh guidelines for the new scholarship scheme to be implemented by the School and Mass Education (SME) department from the current year.
The government launched the Mukhyamantri Medhabruti Yojana in 2017 to provide scholarships of Rs 5,000 to around 40,000 students who score good marks in Class X exams.
However, as per a resolution of the SME department published recently, the scheme has now been subsumed in the new ‘ Mukhyamantri Shikhya Puraskar’ for which an outlay of Rs 100 crore has been made in the budget to reward students, teachers, alumni, school committee members, DEOs, BEOs, CRCCs and sarpanches for excellence and contribution in the field of education. Similarly, the ‘Best School Award and Felicitations to Parents of successful students’ programme has also been subsumed in the new scheme.
Meanwhile, as per the resolution, around Rs 34.33 crore will be spent by the state government for awarding around 53,600 meritorious students, while another Rs 1.85 crore will be spent on 700 teacher awards. Under the students’ award, the top 100 students at the state level will receive a cash prize of `50,000 each, while another 3,000 at the district level will receive Rs 10,000 each.
At the block level, the SME department will award 31,400 students with a cash prize of Rs 5,000 each. The government has also set aside `1.20 crore towards 419 HM awards and another Rs 11.60 lakh for 58 cluster resource centre coordinator (CRCC) awards. Similarly, Rs 34.21 crore has also been earmarked towards incentives to 1,057 best-performing schools in the state, district and block levels.
The government will felicitate gram panchayats under the Shikhya Puraskar Yojana for which `8.64 crore has been set aside for 414 awards at different levels. Prizes will also be given under several other categories including DEO and BEO. As per the fresh guidelines, all regular students of government and government-aided secondary schools including those under the ST and SC development department, who have passed their Class X exams with good marks will be eligible for the scheme provided they meet NFSA and State Food Security Scheme criteria. The Mo School Abhiyan Parichalana Sanghathan will ensure the overall implementation of the scheme and collect the list of students with marks from BSE after the publication of results for the finalisation of student awards.
Awarding merit
