NEW DELHI: DMK Lok Sabha MP Dr. D Ravikumar said he will flag the Centre scrapping a national scheme that incentivised secondary education for SC/ST girls to reduce the dropout rate, in the Union Budget session. Ravikumar told this newspaper that he would raise the matter “urgently” when Parliament meets again on March 14 for the second part of the session.
“I had personally given a memorandum to restart the National Scheme of Incentive to Girls for Secondary Education (NSIGSE) to Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan in the winter session last year. He had promised to look into it and had said that the scheme will be restructured,” the MP from Villupuram in Tamil Nadu said.
Launched in May 2008 by the UPA government, the NSIGSE was designed to promote secondary school enrolment of girls in the age group of 14-18 years. It was an extension of the Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya initiative under which 1,000 residential schools for SC, ST, and OBC girl students were opened in 2006-07. A sum of Rs 3,000 was deposited in bank accounts and which could be withdrawn when the beneficiaries reached the age of 18. The scheme, however, was discontinued in 2018-19.
Despite the promise by the union education minister, the DMK MP said, there was no mention in the budget about the scheme. There was a 30 per cent drop in the allocations for scholarships for SC/ST and OBC students compared to the last financial year, he said.
“Apart from raising the matter on the floor of the house, I also plan to take up a joint memorandum of other party members to the education minister. The government is not serious about providing formal education to all. It is a serious design on its part. It is a Manuvadi idea they want to thrust. They want to deny formal education to SC/ST and OBC children,” Ravikumar said.