Students eligible for education loans or scholarships complain that the money they are entitled to comes too late, often months after they pay the admission fee. The Karnataka State Minority Development Corporation (KMDC) has now come up with a mechanism to prevent this.
The corporation has entered into a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Karnataka Examinations Authority (KEA) so that the fee of minority students joining a professional course through the Common Entrance Test (CET), by availing themselves of loans under the ‘Arivu’ scheme, can be paid directly at the time of admission.
“As per the MoU, we will create a corpus with the KEA from which the admission fee of an eligible student will be paid. We will decide on the size of the corpus after we get an approximate idea of the number of applications,” said Qamar-ul Islam, Minister for Minority Welfare, Haj and Waqf. The corporation has been giving applications for the scheme along with the CET brochure.
Under the Arivu scheme, student can avail themselves of a loan of up to Rs. 10 lakh at an interest rate of 1 per cent. All minority students — Muslim, Christian, Jain, Buddhist, Sikh and Parsi — whose family income is less than Rs. 4.5 lakh per annum are eligible for the loan.
“Many poor and meritorious students opt out of professional courses because their parents cannot raise the money in time. If there is no delay in providing loan, these students will benefit,” said Mohammed Saleem, managing director, KMCD.
He said that while all other features of the scheme remain, the loan is pre-sanctioned and paid directly to make it more convenient.
Mr. Saleem said that NGOs and community organisations had been roped in to popularise the scheme. May 31 is the last day to apply. Contact the KMDC on (080) 22861226 or (080) 22860999.
