YSR Congress honorary president Y.S. Vijayamma launched a two-day fast on Thursday demanding the State government to revoke the cap on fee reimbursement for students of higher education and meet the full expenditure incurred by them for professional and technical courses.
Amid slogan-shouting by a large number of students who came to the venue at Indira Park, she denied that YSRC was supporting corporate colleges and maintained that the party always took up people’s problems.
Hitting out at the government for imposing a cap and limiting the scheme to those who secured ranks below 10,000 in EAMCET, she said that many poor students would be affected by the decision.
She also faulted the government for fixing varying fee slabs for different engineering colleges and accused it of creating confusion among students and their parents. Former Chief Minister Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy had initiated the fee reimbursement scheme with the aim of ensuring that no poor student was denied education.
Ms. Vijayamma said around Rs.3,000 crore would have to be earmarked for fee reimbursement this year but expressed doubts if the government would sanction the required amount. She charged the government with failing in rendering justice to any section. K. Srisailam Goud, MLA, demanded the government to continue with full reimbursement, while B. Govardhan, a member of the party’s political affairs committee, refuted APCC president Botcha Satyanarayana’s charge that it was a fake deeksha.
Dubbing the government as “fake”, he said fee reimbursement scheme was meant to help the poor and it should be implemented in toto.
Botcha raps Vijayamma
Pradesh Congress Committee president Botcha Satyanarayana on Thursday alleged that Ms. Vijayamma had undertaken ‘fee deeksha’ to protect the interests of the private professional colleges.
The PCC chief wondered why the YSRC leadership had undertaken the protest programme when the students and their parents were more than happy with the fee reimbursement and scholarship schemes being implemented by the Congress government.
He said when the fee reimbursement scheme was conceived by Rajasekhara Reddy, eight lakh students were covered by the then government, but now the same scheme is providing relief to as many as 28 lakh students.
