Despite paying two instalments of margin money, students from the minority community studying professional courses in the State are waiting for the Karnataka Minorities Development Corporation to renew their education loan under Arivu scheme and release fees for the second and subsequent years of their courses.
Around 2,000 students from Dakshina Kannada and 300 from Udupi districts alone are among those who are waiting for release of fees for the 2019-20 academic year.
Under the scheme, students from religious minority groups, who want to pursue professional courses, masters degree, nursing, B.Ed, and other courses are provided loans ranging between ₹10,000 and ₹75,000 per year till completion of the course.
The loan is released if the student pays “margin money”, which is 10% of the loan amount and 2% service charge, in instalments spread over the term of course. For engineering course, the margin amount comes to around ₹6,000 per year.
Activist Umar U.H. said till last year, the loan amount was being renewed for the second and subsequent years of the course once the candidate pays the margin amount related to earlier year. “Now, the corporation is asking payment of marginal amount for earlier year and that of present year. Despite parents complying with this new norm, the corporation is yet to release the amount,” he said.
Among the affected include Abdul Hameed, who works in a shop in Mangaluru. He pledged gold ornaments to take loan and pay the ₹1.5 lakh as fees in July last year for his daughter who is in third year BDS. “The delay in releasing the amount is really hurting,” he said and added that he had paid ₹11,700 as margin money.
Director of the corporation Sayeeda Aysha told The Hindu the corporation needs around ₹30 crore to clear pending applications. “We are working out ways to clear it. It will be done in the next few days,” she said.
She said that margin money is being collected as per norms of the scheme, which is clearly mentioned in the indemnity bond signed by the parent and the student. Collection of this margin amount, she said, helped the corporation pay ₹155 crore to students for the year 2018-19 and 2019-20. This is against the total budget of ₹149 crore for Arivu and 13 other schemes of the corporation. As much as ₹16.13 crore is for students of Dakshina Kannada from where a majority of applications for Arivu scheme are filed.
